1591 in poetry
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Events
- February 25 - English Queen Elizabeth I awards Edmund Spenser a pension of 50 pounds per year for life
Works published
Great Britain">English poetry">Great Britain
- Nicholas Breton, Brittons Bowre of Delights
- Thomas Campion, Astrophel and Stella
- Michael Drayton, The Harmonie of the Church
- Abraham Fraunce:
- * The Countesse of Pembrokes Emanuel
- * The Countesse of Pembrokes Yvychurch, Part 1 adapted from Torquato Tasso's Aminta; Part 2 a revision of Fraunce's translation of Amyntas 1587 by Thomas Watson; volume also includes translations of the second Bucolic of Virgil and of the opening of Heliodorus's Aethiopica
- Sir John Harington, Orlando Furioso in English Heroical Verse, translated from the Italian of Ludovico Ariosto
- James VI of Scotland, Lepanto
- George Peele, Decensus Astraeae, a pageant for the lord mayor of London
- Sir Philip Sidney, Astrophel and Stella published first this year from an unauthorized, corrupt text, with 107 sonnets and 10 songs by Sidney, with other verse by Samuel Daniel, Thomas Campion, Greville, Edward de Vere and others, as well as a preface by Thomas Nashe. The text, copied down by an employee of an associate of Sidney, had so many errors and misreadings that Sidney's friends secured all the unsold copies. The volume was then published again this year in a corrected edition, also unauthorized, with 94 sonnets by Sidney and none of the additional poems.
- Edmund Spenser:
- * Complaints, including "The Ruines of Time"; "The Teares of the Muses"; "Virgils Gnat"; "Prosopopoia; or, Mother Hubberds Tale"; "Muiopotmos"; "Visions of the Words Vanitie"; the volume lampoons William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, who had interceded with Queen Elizabeth I to reduce the handsome pension she had originally promised Spenser ; although this volume was printed, it was suppressed almost immediately
- ''''
Other
- Hernando de Acuña, Diverses Poésies, also known as Varias poesías, Spain
- Giordano Bruno, Italian philosopher and poet writing in Latin in a style imitating Lucretius and expressing his philosophical, cosmological speculations in their final form; printed by John Wenchel in Frankfort, Germany:
- * De innumerabilibus immenso et infigurabili
- * De triplici et minimo et mensura
- * De monade numero et figura
- Philippe Desportes, Psaumes, France
- Andrés de Villalta. Flor de varios y nuevos romances, including a ballad by Miguel de Cervantes, Spain
Births
Death years link to the corresponding " in poetry" article:- February 25 - Friedrich Spee von Langenfeld, German Jesuit and poet
- August 24 - Robert Herrick, English
- November 2 - August Buchner, German poet and critic
- Also:
- * Akha Bhagat, Indian poet, Vedantist and radical
- * Jakob Jakobeus, Slovak
- * Alexander Ross, birth year uncertain, Scottish poet, author and controversialist
- * Ivan Bunić Vučić, Ragusan, Croatian-language poet
- * Julius Wilhelm Zincgref, German
Deaths
Birth years link to the corresponding " in poetry" article:- July 22 - Veronica Franco, Italian poet and courtesan
- August 23 - Luis de Leon died, Spanish
- December 14 - St. John of the Cross, Spanish
- Also - Johann Fischart, German satirist and publicist