About this book
Aenmerkinge op de Missive van Parnas by Anonymous seizes the ear with a sharp seventeenth-century rebuttal that mixes classical allegory and polemical wit. This history and politics pamphlet answers a celebrated "Missive" about Parnassus, contrasting the ruined Greek Parnassus—said to have fallen by Turkish force—with a rival Italian mount proposed by Boccalyn, and uses that dispute to lampoon literary fashions, political vanity, and the shifting fortunes of nations.
The text unfolds as a learned, satirical meditation: it mocks pretensions of modern poets and courtiers, invokes Apollo, Cicero, and Cato, and reads cultural quarrels as signs of broader social and political change in the Dutch Republic and beyond. Its tone blends classical erudition with civic urgency, reflecting late 17th-century debates over taste, authority, and national identity. Historical context—Ottoman conflicts, Renaissance reception of antiquity, and Dutch Golden Age public discourse—frames the argument without sacrificing lively rhetorical attack.
Ideal for listeners fascinated by early modern polemic, classical reception, or Dutch political history, this audiobook offers a compact, richly allusive window into how literature and politics collided in an era of upheaval.
