These twenty essays examine continuity and change in the language of Latin prose, from its emergence to the twelfth century AD. Issues debated include traditional distinctions between primitive archaic and sophisticated classical Latin, and between superior classical and inferior Silver Latin. A broad range of Latin authors are covered, including Caesar and Cicero, Bede and William of Malmesbury. An extensive introduction traces the volume's recurring themes - the use of poetic diction in prose, archaism, sentence structure, and bilingualism. The diversity of approaches makes this an essential handbook for all those interested in Latin language and literature.
Of the peoples of ancient Italy, only the Romans committed newly composed poems to writing, and for about 250 years Latin-speakers developed an impressive verse literature. The language had traditional resources of high style, e.g. alliteration, lexical and morphological archaism or grecism, and of course metaphor and word-order; and there were also less obvious resources in the technical vocabularies of law, philosophy, and medicine. The essays in this volume show how the poets in the classical period combined these elements, and so created a poetic medium that could comprehend satire, invective, erotic elegy, drama, lyric, and the grandest heroic epics. These wide-ranging studies will be essential reading for all students of Latin.
Latin is a language with variable (so-called 'free') word order. "Constituent Order in Classical Latin Prose "(Caesar, Cicero, and Sallust) presents the first systematic description of its constituent order from a pragmatic point of view. Apart from general characteristics of Latin constituent order, it discusses the ordering of the verb and its arguments in declarative, interrogative, and imperative sentences, as well as the ordering within noun phrases. It shows that the relationship of a constituent with its surrounding context and the communicative intention of the writer are the most reliable predictors of the order of constituents in a sentence or noun phrase. It differs from recent studies of Latin word order in its scope, its theoretical approach, and its attention to contextual information. The book is intended both for Latinists and for linguists working in the fields of the Romance languages and language typology.
A completely new guide to writing Latin from scratch, this user-friendly book includes key features such as: broad coverage - all the major grammatical constructions of the Latin language are covered, reinforcing what students have learnt from reading Latin; thorough accessible explanations - no previous experience of writing in Latin assumed; hundreds of examples - clear accurate illustrations of the constructions described, all with full translations; over six hundred practice sentences - graduated exercises leading students through three levels of difficulty from elementary to advanced level; introduction to Latin word order - a brief guide to some of the most important principles; and, longer passages for practising continuous prose composition - more challenging passages to stretch the most able students. It also includes features such as: commentaries on examples of Latin prose style - passages from great Latin prose writers focus attention on imitating real Latin usage; and, complete list of vocabulary - all the words needed for the exercises and a valuable reference for English-Latin work in general.
A “fascinating” meditation on the joys of a not-so-dead language (Los Angeles Review of Books). From acclaimed novelist and Oxford professor Nicola Gardini, this is a personal and passionate look at the Latin language: its history, its authors, its essential role in education, and its enduring impact on modern life—whether we call it “dead” or not. What use is Latin? It’s a question we’re often asked by those who see the language of Cicero as no more than a cumbersome heap of ruins, something to remove from the curriculum. In this sustained meditation, Gardini gives us his sincere and brilliant reply: Latin is, quite simply, the means of expression that made us—and continues to make us—who we are. In Latin, the rigorous and inventive thinker Lucretius examined the nature of our world; the poet Propertius told of love and emotion in a dizzying variety of registers; Caesar affirmed man’s capacity to shape reality through reason; Virgil composed the Aeneid, without which we’d see all of Western history in a different light. In Long Live Latin, Gardini shares his deep love for the language—enriched by his tireless intellectual curiosity—and warmly encourages us to engage with a civilization that has never ceased to exist, because it’s here with us now, whether we know it or not. Thanks to his careful guidance, even without a single lick of Latin grammar, readers can discover how this language is still capable of restoring our sense of identity, with a power that only useless things can miraculously express. “Gardini gives another reason for studying classical languages: ‘The story of our lives is just a fraction of all history . . . life began long before we were born.’ This is the very opposite of a practical argument—it is a meditative, even self-effacing one. To learn a language because it was spoken by some brilliant people 2,000 years ago is to celebrate the world; not a way to optimize yourself, but to get over yourself.” —The Economist “Nicola Gardini’s paean to Latin belongs on the shelf alongside Nabokov’s Lectures on Literature. With a similar blend of erudition, reverence, and impeccable close reading, he connects the dots between etymology and poetry, between syntax and society. And he proves, in the process, that a mysterious and magnificent language, born in ancient Rome, is still relevant to each and every one of us.” —Jhumpa Lahiri, Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times–bestselling author of Roman Stories
Readings and Exercises in Latin Prose Composition provides a refreshing approach for the standard Latin composition course offered at the college level. This text encourages the student to think in Latin through the process of reading unedited Latin selections and then composing in Latin, as opposed to the process of translating back and forth into English. The book offers a number of highly structured composition exercises that introduce students to a deeper understanding of Latin grammar and prose as well as to greater facility in reading and understanding it.
This is the first book to describe the intimate relationship between Latin literature and the politics of ancient Rome. Until now, most scholars have viewed classical Latin literature as a product of aesthetic concerns. Thomas Habinek shows, however, that literature was also a cultural practice that emerged from and intervened in the political and social struggles at the heart of the Roman world. Habinek considers major works by such authors as Cato, Cicero, Horace, Ovid, and Seneca. He shows that, from its beginnings in the late third century b.c. to its eclipse by Christian literature six hundred years later, classical literature served the evolving interests of Roman and, more particularly, aristocratic power. It fostered a prestige dialect, for example; it appropriated the cultural resources of dominated and colonized communities; and it helped to defuse potentially explosive challenges to prevailing values and authority. Literature also drew upon and enhanced other forms of social authority, such as patriarchy, religious ritual, cultural identity, and the aristocratic procedure of self-scrutiny, or existimatio. Habinek's analysis of the relationship between language and power in classical Rome breaks from the long Romantic tradition of viewing Roman authors as world-weary figures, aloof from mundane political concerns--a view, he shows, that usually reflects how scholars have seen themselves. The Politics of Latin Literature will stimulate new interest in the historical context of Latin literature and help to integrate classical studies into ongoing debates about the sociology of writing.
This volume deals with the question of the continuity of Latin literature throughout its history. For the first time, contributions are brought together from each of the three fields within the studies of Latin literature: Classical, Medieval and Neo-Latin, reflecting on problems such as the transmission of the Latin heritage, the creation and perpetuation of a classical normativeness and the reactions against it. The book is divided into three parts, corresponding to the theoretical principle of organic development: “Beginnings?”, “Perfections?”, “Transitions?”, thus questioning the validity of a similar evolutionistic model. Because of the numerous points of contact between Latin and the national literatures, the volume is of particular relevance for the studies of the European literary history. Contributors include: Davide Canfora, Perrine Galand-Hallyn, Sander Goldberg, Thomas Haye, Marc van der Poel, Michael Roberts, Francesco Stella, Wim Verbaal, Gregor Vogt-Spira, and Jan Ziolkowski.
Latin Linguistics is intended as an overview of the main areas of linguistics geared specifically to the scholar of Latin. The book consists of eight chapters: an introduction followed by discussions of phonology, morphology, syntax, variation linguistics, pragmatics, and sociolinguistics, with a final chapter discussing texts from three different periods to demonstrate how linguistic analysis can deepen our understanding of Latin. Most introductions to phonology cover a range of theories, such as Autosegmental Phonology or Optimality Theory; these contribute relatively little to our understanding of Latin as such. On the other hand, a Latinist needs to know how we can reconstruct pronunciation, what the limits of reconstruction are, and how closely orthography mirrors pronunciation. My chapter on phonology deals with these aspects. The same can be said, mutatis mutandis, for the other chapters. What makes this book unique, then, is the fact that it covers a wide range of topics in a deliberately selective way, tailored to the needs of Latinists.
Neither older empiricist positions that genre is an abstract concept, useless for the study of individual works of literature, nor the recent (post) modern reluctance to subject literary production to any kind of classification seem to have stilled the discussion on the various aspects of genre in classical literature. Having moved from more or less essentialist and/or prescriptive positions towards a more dynamic conception of the generic model, research on genre is currently considering "pushing beyond the boundaries", "impurity", "instability", "enrichment" and "genre-bending". The aim of this volume is to raise questions of such generic mobility in Latin literature. The papers explore ways in which works assigned to a particular generic area play host to formal and substantive elements associated with different or even opposing genres; assess literary works which seem to challenge perceived generic norms; highlight, along the literary-historical, the ideological and political backgrounds to "dislocations" of the generic map.
