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16th Century Poet & Critic Samuel Daniel

Samuel Daniel was a sixteenth century poet and critic who made important contributions to literary criticism. He was contemporary with Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, John Drayton, and Sir John Harington, all of whom contributed to poetry in the 1580s and 1590s. All were following in the footsteps of Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey, who had introduced the sonnet into England in the time of Henry VIII and then accommodated the form to the English idiom.

Daniel was born in 1562 in Somersetshire. Thomas Fuller claimed that Daniel's father was a master of music, though no independent evidence has been found to support this statement. His younger brother was a musician, however, and a composer of some note. Samuel was throughout his career a quiet, serious, almost shy man of letters. Nothing is known of his boyhood. When he was nineteen, he entered Magdalen College, Oxford University, and he remained there until 1581, where he met John Florio, remembered today primarily for his later translation of Montaigne. The two were friends for life, and some biographers have even assumed that they later became brothers-in-law. In 1562 Florio produced his manuscript volume Giardino di recreatione, which included among its collection of proverbs four Latin verses by Daniel that made puns on Florio's names. These are Daniel's first recorded verses (Seronsy 13-14).

There has been speculation about other people Daniel might have met while in college, such as the great Italian humanist and philosopher Giordano Bruno, who lectured there in 1583. There is a great contrast between Bruno's vehemence and Daniel's calm, but it is believed that the Italian's Eroici Furiori may have influenced Daniel's later work. Another probable acquaintance was Robert Ashley, who later translated six works from the Italian, French, and Spanish languages. He was certainly friendly with Michael Gwinne, who also contributed to Florio's fir...

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16th Century Poet & Critic Samuel Daniel. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 02:48, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1689972.html