The poem of Johannes Secundus in response to Francesco Maria Molza's epistle on Catherine of Aragon
Abstract
Within the genre of the heroic epistle, the figures of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon aroused special interest in Renaissance authors. In one of these compositions entitled Ad Henricum Britanniae regem uxoris repudiatae nomine, composed around 1534 by Francesco Maria Molza (1489-1544), Catherine of Aragon addresses her husband Henry VIII who has abandoned her to remarry Anne Boleyn. Shortly after, the poet Johannes Secundus (1511-1536) would compose an epistle addressed by Henry to Catherine (Ad Catharinam Reginam Angliae, nomine Regis Henrici VIII conscripta a Io. Secundo) in response to the one written previously by Molza. We propose to analyze and translate the epistle of Johannes Secundus trying to show the literary game articulated around a fictional poetics, where the conventions of the genre are present with a studied deployment of rhetoric.
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