Coelum non animum muto? Milton's Neo-Latin Poetry and Catholic Italy

Milton’s Elegiarum Liber, the first half of his Poemata published in Poems of Mr John Milton Both English and Latin (1645), concludes with a series of eight Latin epigrams: five bitterly anti-Catholic pieces on the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605, followed by three encomiastic poems hymning the praises of an Italian soprano, Leonora Baroni, singing in Catholic Rome. The disparity in terms of subject matter and tone is self-evident yet surprising in an epigrammatic series that runs sequentially. Whereas the gunpowder epigrams denigrate Rome, the Leonora epigrams present the city as a cultured hub of inclusivity, the welcome host of a Neapolitan soprano. In providing the setting for a human song that both enthrals its audience and attests to the presence of a divine power, Rome now epitomizes something other than brute idolatry, clerical habit or doctrine. And for the poet this facilitates an interrogation of theological (especially Catholic) doctrines. Coelum non animum muto, dum trans mare curro wrote the homeward-bound Milton in the autograph book of Camillo Cardoini at Geneva on 10 June 1639. But that this was an animus that could indeed acclimatize to religious and cultural difference is suggested by the Latin poems which Milton “patch [ed] up” in the course of his Italian journey. Central to that acclimatisation, as this chapter argues, is Milton’s quasi-Catholic self-fashioning. Thus Mansus offers a poetic autobiography of sorts, a self-inscribed vita coloured by intertextually kaleidoscopic links with two Catholic poets of Renaissance Italy and their patron; Ad Leonoram 1 both invokes and interrogates Catholic doctrine before a Catholic audience only to view the whole through the lens of a neo-Platonic hermeticism that may refreshingly transcend religious difference. Finally, Epitaphium Damonis, composed upon Milton’s return home, seems to highlight the potential interconnectedness of Protestant England and Catholic Italy, through the Anglo-Italian identity of its deceased subject, and through a pseudo-monasticism suggested by the poem’s possible engagement with the hagiography of a Catholic Saint. Perhaps continental travel and the physical encounter with the symbols, personages and institutions of the other have engendered in the Milton of the Italian journey a tolerance or, more accurately, the manipulation of a seeming tolerance to serve poetic and cultural ends.


First reviewer:
Haan: a fine piece by the senior neo-Latinist in Milton studies.

Second reviewer:
Chapter 7 is ... a high-spot of the collection. Its argument that in his Latin poetry Milton’s is a ‘quasi-Catholic self-fashioning’ stressing ‘the potential interconnectedness of Protestant England and Catholic Italy’ is striking and is advanced with learning, clarity and insight. Its sensitive exploration of the paradox of Milton’s coupling of humanistically complimentary and tolerant address to Roman Catholic friends with fiercely Protestant partisanship demonstrates that there is much greater complexity to his poetic persona than the self-construction and self-presentation of the later works would suggest. The essay is always adroit and sure-footed, often critically acute and illuminating (as, for example, in its discussion of the adjective and adverb mollis and molliter in Mansus, or in the identification in n. 99 of hitherto unnoticed Virgilian echoes). It has the added merits of being very well written, precise and apt in its citation of evidence, and absolutely central to the concerns of the volume.

Inventing the Origin of Theatre History: The Modern Uses of Juba II's 'teatriké historia'

Missing Links, Cultural Modernity and the Dead: Anatomically Modern Humans in the Great Cave of Niah (Sarawak, Borneo)

The Great Cave of Niah in Sarawak (northern Borneo) came into the gaze of Western Science through the work of Alfred Russell Wallace, who came to Sarawak in the 1850s to search for ‘missing links’ in his pioneering studies of evolution and the natural history of Island Southeast Asia and Australasia. The work of Tom and Barbara Harrisson in the 1950s and 1960s placed the Great Cave, and particularly their key find, the ‘Deep Skull’, at the nexus of the evolving archaeological framework for the region: for decades the skull, dated in 1958 by adjacent charcoal to c.40,000 BP, was the oldest fossil of an anatomically modern human anywhere in the world and thus critical to ideas about human evolution and dispersal. Although several authorities later questioned the provenance and antiquity of the Deep Skull, renewed investigations of the Harrisson excavations since 2000 have shown that it can be attributed securely to a specific location in the Pleistocene stratigraphy, with direct U-series dating on a piece of the skull indicating an age for it of c.37,500 BP and the first evidence for associated human activity at the site going back to c.50,000 BP. The new work also indicates that the skull is part of a cultural deposit, perhaps a precursor to the long tradition in Borneo of processing of the dead and secondary burial. These indicators of cultural complexity chime with the complexity of the subsistence behaviour of the early users of the caves discussed by Philip Piper and Ryan Rabett in chapter ten of this volume.

Assessing modern ground survey methods and airborne laser scanning for digital terrain modelling:A case study from the Lake District, England

This paper compares the applicability of three ground survey methods for modelling terrain: one man electronic tachymetry (TPS), real time kinematic GPS (GPS), and terrestrial laser scanning (TLS). Vertical accuracy of digital terrain models (DTMs) derived from GPS, TLS and airborne laser scanning (ALS) data is assessed. Point elevations acquired by the four methods represent two sections of a mountainous area in Cumbria, England. They were chosen so that the presence of non-terrain features is constrained to the smallest amount. The vertical accuracy of the DTMs was addressed by subtracting each DTM from TPS point elevations. The error was assessed using exploratory measures including statistics, histograms, and normal probability plots. The results showed that the internal measurement accuracy of TPS, GPS, and TLS was below a centimetre. TPS and GPS can be considered equally applicable alternatives for sampling the terrain in areas accessible on foot. The highest DTM vertical accuracy was achieved with GPS data, both on sloped terrain (RMSE 0.16. m) and flat terrain (RMSE 0.02. m). TLS surveying was the most efficient overall but veracity of terrain representation was subject to dense vegetation cover. Therefore, the DTM accuracy was the lowest for the sloped area with dense bracken (RMSE 0.52. m) although it was the second highest on the flat unobscured terrain (RMSE 0.07. m). ALS data represented the sloped terrain more realistically (RMSE 0.23. m) than the TLS. However, due to a systematic bias identified on the flat terrain the DTM accuracy was the lowest (RMSE 0.29. m) which was above the level stated by the data provider. Error distribution models were more closely approximated by normal distribution defined using median and normalized median absolute deviation which supports the use of the robust measures in DEM error modelling and its propagation. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd.

Laganside: Poetry from Northern Ireland Today

An analysis of Alan Gillis's poem 'Laganside' as exemple of a post-ceasefire Northern Irish poetic.