Art of Poetry and Lutrin by Nicolas Boileau: A Dual-Language Book

Art of Poetry and Lutrin by Nicolas Boileau: A Dual-Language (Parallel Text) Book

Following in the footsteps of Horace’s Ars Poetica, Boileau’s Art of Poetry lays down, in four entertaining books dealing with all forms and genres of poetry, the codes and rules for good versification. This beautiful translation proved to have a lasting influence on the future shape of English literature – among others, it was imitated magnificently by Pope in his 'Essay on Criticism', who also took Lutrin as a model for his own masterpiece, The Rape of the Lock.

Now reprinted for the first time in more than a century, Sir William Soames’s 1683 verse translation of Boileau’s poetical masterpiece – revised by the great poet John Dryden – here appears together with an eighteenth-century version of his hugely influential mock-heroic poem, Lutrin, with the original French text on facing pages.

Art of Poetry and Lutrin by Nicolas Boileau - About the author

The influential French poet and critic Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1636-1711) laid the foundations for all future French verse, and exercised a strong influence on the course of Western literature.

Art of Poetry and Lutrin by Nicolas Boileau - Dual-Language (Parallel Text) Book

Translated from the French by Sir William Soames(Original French text on the left page with the English translation on the facing page).