“I lisped in numbers”

The first part of this article describes the structure and content of CWE 85 and 86 and outlines the successive stages and themes that emerge from the career of Erasmus as a poet. The second part briefly evaluates the quality of Erasmus’ poetry, principally on the basis of “On the Troubles or Old Age”, as a long, mature, and representative sample. For this evaluation the reviewer comments on what is said in CWE 85 about the Classical and Renaissance background to Erasmus’ poetry, especially on the techniques of rhetoric. An adequate appreciation of Erasmus’ poetry requires that the meaning or rhetoric be understood in more subtle stylistic detail

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Epistemology · Erasmus · Linguistics · Literature · Meaning (existential) · Poetry · Rhetoric · Sociology · The Renaissance · Historical Influence and Diplomacy · Philosophy · Psychology · Renaissance and Early Modern Studies · Renaissance Literature and Culture