Tony Harrison: Classics Society

Poem Title

Original Publication

CP Page no

Classics Society

From ‘The School of Eloquence’ and Other Poems, London: Rex Collings, 1978

130

Length / Form Sixteen-line sonnet.

Allusion to Classical figure Harrison Latinises his own first name as ‘Antoninus’

Relationship to Classical text Reference to ‘good Ciceronian’. ‘We boys can take old Hansards and translate / the British Empire into SPQR’. Harrison’s demotic speech (‘the English that I speak at home’) is seen as unfit for translation into Latin.

Classical/post-Classical intertexts Gives the subheading ‘Leeds Grammar School 1552-1952’ and is introduced by an unreferenced quotation: ‘The grace of Tullies eloquence doth excell / any Englishmans tongue . . . my barbarous stile.’

Comment The formal English approved for Latin translation is depicted as being as much a ‘dead’ language as the latter.