A commentary on selected Latin poems by Walter Savage Landor
Date
1976
Authors
McKinnon, John Bruce
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Abstract
Landor wrote a large quantity of Latin verse on which virtually no scholarly work has been done. My selection of thirty poems (about 450 lines) tries to be representative of his different approaches to the subject of women.
The introduction includes a discussion of Landor's classical background for he was exceptionally well read and thoroughly knew all the major classical poets. The bulk of the thesis is a commentary on the texts of individual poems (prose translations of selected poems are included in an opens with a few general remarks about the interpretation or structure of the poem, it is fundamentally a philological study with special emphasis on prosodiacal and lexicographical features.
A number of general characteristics of Landor's Latin verse arise from this study. He was a great craftsman but occasionally made errors, some of which could easily have been avoided. Al though Landor fully utilized his knowledge about the words, phrases and metrical techniques employed by classical poets, his poems never become a patch-work even when he clearly had one specific classical poem in mind. Many of his poems are free from difficulties of understanding; however a number do contain linguistic and structural obscurities which de tract greatly from the overall effect of the work.