Ringing Classical Bells? Virgilian Intertexts in William Dillingham's ‘Campanae Undellenses’

In his seminal survey of Anglo-Latin poetry Leicester Bradner remarked that the subjects of William Dillingham's Latin verse show his complete independence of the old school of classical imitation. While it is undeniable that such topics as sporting on a seventeenth-century bowling green seem to locate that verse in a world far removed from things classical, Bradner's comment requires qualification and modification in that it overlooks a key aspect of Dillingham's methodology. Central to that methodology is the way in which the poems themselves engage on a frequently complex level with a wide range of classical intertexts for neo-Latin literature is perhaps the most intertextual of forms, recasting the language of ancient Rome and appropriating it to a variety of contemporary contexts. Haan discusses Virgilian intertexts in William Dillingham's Campanae Undellenses.