Latin

This course will survey the history of Latin manuscript books and Latin scripts from late Antiquity to the early years of printing (4th -15th century). Students will study the questions that have driven the field of paleography since its inception, and the canonical history of the main scripts used in Western Europe through the end of the Middle Ages. We will consider the manuscript book as a physical artifact, in a codicological approach; and we will look at the production of books in their social and political settings. Students will develop practical skills in reading and transcription, and will begin to recognize the features that allow localization and dating of manuscripts. We will use original materials from the Rare Book and Manuscript Library whenever possible.

We reconstruct the ancient world in part from ancient literature; we reconstruct ancient literature largely from manuscripts written long after the works they contain. How do editors reconstruct texts, and how can we judge their reconstructions? This course will examine the history of classical texts from antiquity to the fifteenth century and the theory and history of editing texts from the Renaissance to the present. Emphasis will be on classical Latin literature, but some consideration of Greek texts may also be useful.

This course will consider ancient Roman Literature, from the Republican period to late antiquity, as an evidentiary base for the study of the ancient book.  This course is intended to expose students to the main body of evidence for the object and uses of the Roman book, which is crucial to any understanding of ancient literature qua literature.  Students will become familiar with a wide body of evidence, and encounter a diverse range of texts.  Students will also become conversant in important and current scholarly and methodological debates about the materiality of literature, and the nature of the book and literacy in antiquity, and the place of material studies in Classics.  Students will undertake an independent research paper which they will present to the classmates at the end of the semester.

A close examination of Apuleius' Metamorphoses.

The Epics of the Silver Period of Latin with an emphasis on close-reading.

A close analysis of Cicer's Brutus in its many contexts: as a responce to Caesar's dictatorship; as an account of oratory and rhetorical practices in Rome; as the first extant attempt to write an intellectual history of Rome, defining and defending Cicer both against the past and against the present.

Readings from Livy, with special attention to Scipio the Elder.

This seminar will offer close readings of a selection of Ovid's major works, with emphasis on their relationship to the politics and major literary developments of the age in which he wrote; texts will include Metamorphoses 3, 6, and 15; Fasti 4 and 6; Ars Amatoria 3; and selections on his exilic writings. Key developments in modern critical analysis of Ovid and (late-) Augustan culture will also be discussed, with selected secondary readings assigned.

A close reading of the fragments of Quintus Ennius, including dramatic, epic and philosophical texts. Particular attention will be paid to Ennius' double role as Hellenistic poet and as the first self-conscious creator of and independent Roman literature.

The conflict of religions in the late fourth and early fifth centuries in its political and social context. Artistic and literary manifestations and documentary evidence.

Marcus Terentius Varro (116-27 BCE) was, without question, the most prolific as well as one of the most original Roman scholars: the author of some 75 scholarly works, 150 satires, poems, and dialogues of popular philosophy.  Of this vast output, what survives is one complete work, his treatise on agriculture (De re rustica) in three books, written near the end of his life, and a substantial portion (books 5-10) of his 25-book treatise on the Latin language.  In addition, there are several thousand fragments of his other works, including significant numbers from his Antiquities (the founding work of antiquarian research), his Disciplines (particularly On Philosophy), and his Menippean Satires.  There has been no attempt at a complete edition of the fragments since the sixteenth century. The goal of this course is to introduce graduate students to Varro, whose writings, though fragmentary, played a crucial role in later approaches to the early history of Rome, Roman literature, and the Latin language as well as providing an important foil to Augustine's Christian refutation of Roman ideals in City of God.  We intend to view him both within the history of the literary and scholarly genres he engaged with (and to some extent created) and in the context of his interaction with his intellectual contemporaries, in particular Cicero and Caesar.

Latin literature from the beginning to early Augustan times.

Latin literature from Augustus to 600 C.E.

This course is intended to complement Latin V3012: Augustan Poetry in providing students I a transition between the elementary, grammatical study of Latin texts to a more fluent understanding of complex literary style.  Latin V3013 will largely concentrate on different styles of writing, particularly narrative, invective, and argument.  Text will be drawn primarily from Cicero’s orations, with some readings form his rhetorical works.

This seminar aims to provide students in the post-baccalaureate certificate program with opportunities 1) to (re-)familiarize themselves with a selection of major texts from classical antiquity, which will be read in English, 2) to become acquainted with scholarship on these texts and with scholarly writing in general, 3) to write analytically about these texts and the interpretations posed about them in contemporary scholarship, and 4) to read in the original language selected passages of one of the texts in small tutorial groups, which will meet every week for an additional hour with members of the faculty.

A one-term intensive review of the basic grammar and reading skills; designed for students who have had some Latin in the past but need further instruction to qualify for LATN V1201.

Selections from Catullus and from Cicero or Caesar.

Selections from Ovid's Metamorphoses and from Sallust, Livy, Seneca, or Pliny.

This course is limited to students in the Postbaccalaureate program. The intensive reading of a series of Latin texts, both prose and verse, with special emphasis on detailed stylistic and grammatical analysis of the language.

This seminar aims to provide students in the post-baccalaureate certificate program with opportunities 1) to (re-)familiarize themselves with a selection of major texts from classical antiquity, which will be read in English, 2) to become acquainted with scholarship on these texts and with scholarly writing in general, 3) to write analytically about these texts and the interpretations posed about them in contemporary scholarship, and 4) to read in the original language selected passages of one of the texts in small tutorial groups, which will meet every week for an additional hour with members of the faculty.

An introduction to the range of Ciceronian public writings and to the social and intellectual context in which they were composed. Selections from all the major genres of his works.

Intensive review of Latin syntax with translation of English sentences and paragraphs into Latin.

The goal of this course is to improve students' knowledge of Latin style through reading of selected texts and exercises in imitation of the style of the various authors. The course assumes a very good reading knowledge of Latin.

Introduction to the development of the Latin language, including historical phonology and morphology, archaic Latin, the development of literary Latin, and colloquial and vulgar Latin texts.

A survey of early medieval biblical hermeneutics from the patristic age to Bede. The course will include both the theory of biblical interpretation (and especially its relation to classical grammar and rhetoric and to the debate about translation), as well as its literary practice. Readings from the works of Augustine, Jerome, Bede, Avitus, Proba, and others.

An introduction to the Latin language: linguistic analysis of morphology and phonology combined with exploration of its cultural significance as an artificial construct. Topics to be considered will include: the struggle over 'Latinity' in the first century BCE; the problem of 'vulgar Latin'; the role of the grammarian as guarantor of social order; archaism and linguistic innovation.