Book

A Selection of the Poems of Sir Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687)

A Selection of the Poems of Sir Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687) was published in July 2015, edited and translated by Adriaan van der Weel and Peter Davidson.

Author: Adriaan van der Weel and Peter Davidson (Eds. and translation)
Date: 05 August 2015
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Sir Constantijn Huygens

Dutch Golden Age poet Constantijn Huygens was one of the Dutch nation's principal contributors to the transformation of European culture in the early-modern period. He was a remarkable figure: as a poet, diplomat, scholar and statesman, he influenced the cultural, scholarly and political life of his time. He was secretary to two Princes of Orange, Frederick Henry and William II; and became a friend to John Donne, Rembrandt, Descartes, and many other notable people of his time.

Broad selection

A Selection of the Poems of Sir Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687)introduces his poetry to English-speaking readers. The poems have been selected to demonstrate the breadth of his interests, his pivotal role in European culture and his mastery of a variety of literary genres and styles. In this book Adriaan van der Weel and Peter Davidson offer a broad selection of Huygens’s poems and provide excellent translations for those written in Dutch, Latin, and a number of other languages, revealing both Huygens’s literary talent and his remarkable linguistic range. The translations face the original and are provided with headnotes. The concise biographical and cultural introduction, the three extensive appendices and the bibliography and index present ample suggestions for further investigation of the many areas of possible interest presented in this book, such as architecture, garden design, painting, music, science, and politics.

The book is published in the series Amsterdam Studies in the Dutch Golden Age by Amsterdam University Press in collaboration with the Amsterdam Centre for Study of the Golden Age, which aims to promote the history and culture of the Dutch Republic during the ‘long’ seventeenth century (c. 1560-1720).

ISBN: 9789089648792
Pages: 294
Series: Amsterdam Studies in the Dutch Golden Age