Epithalamiums: An Anthology of Marriage Poems from Chaucer to the Modern Age

Anthologies provide ready, expansive insights into specific forms of literature. In the genre of poetry, nuptial poetry is singularly under-represented. The only extant anthology on nuptial poetry, published in the last decade of the nineteenth century, is now difficult to find, and does not have entries beyond the eighteenth century. The present anthology aims to compensate for this, and offers a comprehensive selection of epithalamic poetry from the fourteenth to the twentieth centuries. The 'Introduction' to the volume, in a fresh perspective, sets up comparisons with the Oriental traditions-Sanskrit, Hebrew, Arabic, and Chinese-of nuptial verse along with their Greek and Latin versions which are the original models for the English epithalamiums.