The Reception of Horace in Eighteenth-Century France

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The ancient Roman poet Horace (65-8 BC) has long exercised a fascination on readers and writers alike, even to this day, from the seemingly banal currency given to such Horatian tags as 'carpe diem' and 'nunc est bibendum' to the work of the Barnsley-born poet Donald Davie, who wrote a poem in 1985 about the miners' strike, 'Wombwell on Strike', in explicit imitation of an Horatian ode. Horace's influence on eighteenth-century English writers, notably Alexander Pope, was of particular importance. But he left a deep mark, too, on eighteenth-century French culture. It is surprising, then, that there is to date no overall study of Horace's presence in eighteenth-century France. My proposed research goes some way to making good that gap in scholarship by analysing specific instances of the appropriation and re-fashioning of the poet and his works in a range of discourses in eighteenth-century France, from the moral to the philosophical and even the political. This research will lead to significant advances in our knowledge both of eighteenth-century French culture and of the persistence of the classical tradition in the early modern period more generally.