Articles liés à Coffee: A Poem

Coffee: A Poem - Couverture souple

Massieu, Guillaume

 
9781910345795: Coffee: A Poem

Synopsis


We do not often think nowadays of hot drinks as a subject for poetry, but the eighteenth century viewed things rather differently, with poems on an extraordinary range of topics electricity, solar and lunar eclipses, scientifc instruments, gardening, and, indeed, hot drinks.

One of the most successful of these poems, at least in terms of its number of appearances in anthologies and in translation, was the Abbé Massieu s poem Caffæum, Carmen (Coffee: A Poem), a relatively short long poem written in Latin which was esteemed by contemporaries and able to attract readers for over a century after its author s death.

Latin verse continued to be a lively and successful cultural phenomenon well into the eighteenth century and this ingenious and entertaining poem not only tells us all about the origins and the real or alleged properties of coffee but even how to make a cup of coffee.

John Gilmour s witty translation in rhyming couplets perfectly captures the humour and playfulness of the original poem, and his introduction helps to locate both poem and author in their historic context.

Les informations fournies dans la section « Synopsis » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

À propos de l'auteur

Guillaume Massieu was born in the Normandy town of Caen in 1665, studied as a young man at the Jesuit Collège de Louis-le-Grand in Paris where he discovered his enthusiasm was for literature. He was fortunate to fnd influential patrons, was made a member of the Académie royale des Inscriptions et Médailles, subsequently became Professor of Greek at the Collège royal de France, and was fnally elected a member of the Académie française. His last years were clouded by illness, and he died in 1722 at the age of 58.

Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.