Languages, of course, are human creations, tools we invent and hone to suit our needs. Simply showing that speakers of different languages t...

For Robert Herrick, the samples include: Delight in Disorder To the Virgins That Make Much of Time Corinna's Going a-Maying U...

Thanks to my friend Kia Penso, an ardent admirer of 17th Century English lyrics, we now have a link to all of George Herbert's The Templ...

According to the Guardian , the new thing is slow reading: a literary revolution is at hand. First we had  slow food , then  slow travel . ...

As we noted last time, Donne's poems often take the form of arguments, playing upon wit, logic, and verbal fireworks to make a case to a...

For Wed., July 7, here are the Donne poems we'll be focusing on - you should be able to print these out if you wish.

Horace Odes I.10: Mercuri   facunde   nepos   Atlantis , qui   feros   cultus   hominum   recentum voce   formasti   catus   et   decorae ...

NPR had an interesting story recently about Botticelli's painting, Venus and Mars . Apparently no scholar had noticed until now that in...

Horace tacitly assumes his readers will be entirely familiar with  Aristotle's Poetics , which he cites, alludes to, and plays off of th...

Beginning July 7, as agreed, we'll be reading a few 17th Century British poets. Mussy has been looking at online resources and sent some...

From A.S. Kline's online Horace: Bk I Ep V:1-31 An invitation to dinner If you can bear to recline at dinner on a couch By  Archias ,...

After Horace, the plan is to look at a few 17th Century British poets, to expand our context for Milton. There are some resources on the Net...