This paper is no longer offered by the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages. The below is kept for archive purposes only.
Paper NL1 is designed to be taken either by part IB or part II students who have done Classical Latin at A-level or in the Modern Languages Tripos, or by students who have not previously studied Latin, but who are prepared to work hard to learn the language, along the lines of the Occitan and Catalan papers at present.
The aims of the paper are to introduce you to a number of important texts written in Latin in a range of European countries, to address the issues involved in the use of Latin as a means of communication in early modern Europe, and to enable you to develop close reading skills with Neo-Latin texts. Since Latin was being used as a literary language alongside the vernacular, the Neo-Latin paper will offer valuable insights into the cultural and educational background of other national literatures.
Texts
- Giovanni Boccaccio, De claris mulieribus (selected chapters)
- Johannes Secundus, Basia
- Angelo Poliziano, Rusticus
- John Milton, Epitaphium Damonis, Elizabeth Weston, Parthenica 1. 9, Anthony Alsop, Odes 1. 11
- Joachim du Bellay, Elegiae
- Andrew Marvell, Latin Poetry
- Marco Girolamo Vida, De arte poetica, book 3
- Girolamo Fracastoro, Syphilis sive Morbus Gallicus (Book III)
Topics:
- Neo-Latin and the vernacular
- Neo-Latin and rhetoric and poetics
- Classical models
In addition to familiarising themselves with the texts listed above, students may find the following preparatory reading helpful:
Language (essential reading for ab initio students of Latin)
- Wheelock's Latin, Frederick M. Wheelock, rev. Richard A. LaFleur (New York: HarperCollins, 2000; 6th edition or any other edition)
General
- Grahame Castor and Terence Cave, eds, Neo-Latin and the Vernacular in Renaissance France (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984).
- P. Godman and O. Murray (eds.), Latin Poetry and the Classical Tradition: Essays in Medieval and Renaissance literature (Oxford, 1990)
- Yasmin Haskell and Philip Hardie, eds, Poets and Teachers: Latin Didactic Poetry and the Didactic Authority of the Latin Poet from the Renaissance to the Present (Bari: Levante, 1999)
- Jozef Ijsewijn, Companion to Neo-Latin Studies, Part I, History and Diffusion of Neo-Latin Literature. Second entirely rewritten edition by Jozef IJsewijn (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1990)
- Jozef Ijsewijn,Companion to Neo-Latin Studies, Part II, Literary, Linguistic, Philological and Editorial Questions. Second entirely rewritten edition by Jozef IJsewijn with Dirk Sacré (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1998)
- Renaissance Latin Verse: An Anthology, compiled and edited by Alessandro Perosa and John Sparrow (London: Duckworth, 1979) [ML6.V.41]
Teaching is in the form of sixteen weekly lectures or seminars, and fortnightly supervisions on the authors and topics. In addition to this there will be language tuition sessions for those students wishing to improve their language skills.
Assessment is by one three-hour exam. The paper will have a tripartite structure:
- Section A will consist of questions on set texts
- Section B will have questions on prescribed topics
- Section C will offer a choice of passages taken from the set texts for critical commentary.
Candidates will answer one question from each section. The commentary section will offer three passages selected from among the set texts, of which one must be chosen.
Exam papers which have been set since 2008 can be downloaded from CamTools.
This paper is also available for examination by Long Essay.
Dr Andrew Taylor |
