
Prescribing Ovid
The Latin Works and Networks of the Enlightened Dr Heerkens
Yasmin Haskell(Author)
Bloomsbury Academic (Publisher)
Published on 25. September 2014
Book
Paperback/Softback
280 pages
978-1-4725-8750-3 (ISBN)
Description
Gerard Nicolaas Heerkens was a cosmopolitan Dutch physician and Latin poet of the eighteenth century. A Catholic, he was in many ways an outsider on his own turf, the peat country of Protestant Groningen, and looked to Voltaire's Paris, much as Ovid, in exile, had looked to Rome. An indefatigable traveller and networker, Heerkens mixed freely with philosophers, physicians, churchmen and antiquarians. This book reconstructs his Latin works and networks, and reveals in the process a virtually unexplored corner of eighteenth-century culture, the 'Latin Enlightenment'.
Reviews / Votes
Prescribing Ovid will be particularly useful for those interested in the position of Latin in the 18th-century and the Enlightenment. It is also a valuable case study about the ways in which the Republic of Letters was put to practical use during this period. Finally, Heerkens's self-presentation as an 18th-century Ovid is a fascinating case for those working on self-fashioning both in literature in general and in the works of early modern (Neo-Latin) authors in particular. -- Floris Verhaart * Bryn Mawr Classical Review * It required great courage to devote a sizeable monograph to a person who is unfamiliar even to neo-Latin scholars. The book therefore serves as a model to anyone who intends to study one of the hundreds of neglected writers who devoted themselves to Latin literature in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries . . . This book is truly fascinating. It presents Heerkens as a man from the provinces who, thanks to his literary activity and travels, encountered many people from the mainstream Enlightenment movement and the cultural, intellectual, and religious life of his times. -- Piotr Urbanski * Journal of Jesuit Studies * As the history of learning moves towards the study of reception and circulation of knowledge, a study of the use of Latin in the eighteenth century has long been overdue. Latin journals, for example, are largely overlooked in favour of vernacular journals ... Haskell's book, then, moves appealingly into this literary wasteland. -- Dirk van Miert * Neulateinisches Jahrbuch * It's difficult not to admire the thoroughness of a piece of research that connects so many diverse areas and which has obliged the author to engage with all the European countries traversed by her hero ... An excellent and complete model of intellectual biography. -- Giuseppe Ricuperati * Rivista Storica Italiana, (Bloomsbury Translation) *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
7 bw illus
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 15 mm
Weight
433 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4725-8750-3 (9781472587503)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
03/2013
1st Edition
Bloomsbury Academic
€42.99
Available for download

E-Book
03/2013
1st Edition
Bloomsbury Academic
€42.99
Available for download
Person
Yasmin Haskell has been Cassamarca Foundation Chair in Latin Humanism at the University of Western Australia since 2003. She is a Chief Investigator in the Australian Research Council's Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions 1100-1800. She is the author of Loyola's Bees: Ideology and Industry in Jesuit Latin Didactic Poetry, winner of the British Academy Postdoctoral Monographs Competition.
Content
List of figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Cultivating the Two Apollos I. Finding his Feet: Six or Five?
II. Stepping Out: Healing the Republic of Letters III. Tomi Calling: Letters to/from Italy IV. Writing Home: Lessons from Italy V. Patriots in Portraits: From National to Natural History VI. Inscriptions and Prescriptions: The Art of Healing in Long and Short
Conclusion: Notes from the Margins
Appendix: Published Works of Gerard Nicolaas Heerkens Bibliography Index
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Cultivating the Two Apollos I. Finding his Feet: Six or Five?
II. Stepping Out: Healing the Republic of Letters III. Tomi Calling: Letters to/from Italy IV. Writing Home: Lessons from Italy V. Patriots in Portraits: From National to Natural History VI. Inscriptions and Prescriptions: The Art of Healing in Long and Short
Conclusion: Notes from the Margins
Appendix: Published Works of Gerard Nicolaas Heerkens Bibliography Index