Prescribing Ovid The Latin Works and Networks of the Enlightened Dr Heerkens [Paperback]

Gerard Nicolaas Heerkens was a cosmopolitan Dutch physician and Latin poet of the eighteenth century. A Catholic, he was in many ways an outsider on his own turf, the peat country of Protestant Groningen, and looked to Voltaire's Paris, much as Ovid, in exile, had looked to Rome. An indefatigable traveller and networker, Heerkens mixed freely with philosophers, physicians, churchmen and antiquarians. This book reconstructs his Latin works and networks, and reveals in the process a virtually unexplored corner of eighteenth-century culture, the 'Latin Enlightenment'.

Explores the intellectual and identity politics of Latin language use in the Enlightenment 'Republic of Letters' via the figure of Gerard Nicolaas Heerkens (1728-1801), a Dutch physician and Latin poet, disenchanted disciple of Voltaire, and lifelong devotee of Ovid.

Yasmin Haskellhas been Cassamarca Foundation Chair in Latin Humanism at the University of Western Australia since 2003. She is a Chief Investigator in the Australian Research Council's Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions 1100-1800. She is the author ofLoyola's Bees:Ideology and Industry in Jesuit Latin Didactic Poetry, winner of the British Academy Postdoctoral Monographs Competition.

List of figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Cultivating the Two Apollos I. Finding his Feet: Six or Five?
II. Stepping Out: Healing the Republic of Letters III. Tomi Calling: Letters to/from Italy IV. Writing Home: Lessons from Italy V. Patriots in Portraits: From National to Natural History VI. Inscriptions and Prescriptions: The Art of Healing in Long and Short
Conclusion: Notes from the Margins
Appendix: Published Works of Gerard Nicolaas Heerkens Bibliography Index