Goal: For students with basic grounding in Latin grammar and vocabulary, introduction to reading medieval Latin texts. Substantial attention will be paid to enhancing basic linguistic skills, but a wide range of texts will be read, with personalized assignments according to taste and skill.
What to Expect: For each class, you will have read all the Latin texts in a single chapter of the textbook according to the schedule linked here. An e-mail list will provide opportunity to discuss your problems with each other as you go along (and the instructor will be listening and chiming in); you should use this feature to maximize your understanding of the texts collaboratively. You should be ready to be quizzed in writing on the contents (brief quiz at the beginning of the hour), but there will not be quizzes every day. Classroom activities may include discussion of the assigned readings, discussion of unprepared readings presented "at sight" in the classroom, and other exercises.
Course Requirements:
Text for purchase: K. Sidwell, Reading Medieval Latin (Contents)
On-line resources:
Final assignments for spring 1997:
The "Dies Irae" of Thomas of Celano (for Tuesday, 15 April)
Two poems from Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy:
The same prisoner imagines what it would be to be happy
Grammar texts from later Latin, and some modern helps
Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy and related materials
Augustine: the Confessions in various versions and other texts
All students of medieval subjects should know and use The Labyrinth library created at Georgetown by Martin Irvine and Deborah Everhart.