Gerardus Joannes Vossius: Poeticarum institutionum libri tres/ Institutios of Poetics in Three Books

This is a new critical edition (in two volumes) of Vossius’ Latin Poeticae institutiones, with a translation in English, an introduction, annotations and a commentary. In 1647 the Amsterdam professor Gerardus Vossius published his main work on poetics, Poeticarum institutionum libri III, which can be considered as an important result of the Dutch Golden Age. In the same year two shorter works appeared, De artis poeticae natura ac constitutione, which is an introduction to the main work, and De imitatione, which elaborates on two aspects of poetics: imitation and recitation. These are added in appendices, also with a translation, but without a commentary. Now this important early modern work on the making of poetry (labeled by Sellin as ’The last of the Renaissance monsters’) is made available also for readers without Latin.

Jan Bloemendal (1961) studied Classics and Dutch Literature at Utrecht University. In 1997 he finished his PhD, an edition of Daniel Heinsius’ Auriacus, sive Libertas saucia. He published on Neo-Latin drama, in a project supported by the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research(NWO), and on Renaissance Latin poetry, Dutch poetry and drama, emblematics and the reception of classical literature. As a senior researcher at the Huygens Institute (KNAW) in the Hague he is secretary of the edition of Erasmi Opera Omnia. He is also professor of Neo-Latin Studies at the University of Amsterdam.