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How to Read a Latin Poem: If You Can't Read Latin Yet PDF

289 Pages·2013·0.91 MB·English
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HOW TO READ A LATIN POEM This page intentionally left blank HOW TO READ A LATIN POEM If You Can’t Read Latin Yet • • WILLIAM FITZGERALD 1 1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, ox2 6dp, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © William Fitzgerald 2013 Th e moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2013 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitt ed, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitt ed by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available ISBN 978–0–19–965786–5 Printed in Great Britain Clays Ltd, St Ives plc To the next generation: Patrick, Tom, and Beatrice This page intentionally left blank ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My greatest debt in the writing of this book is to my colleagues. Latin studies have fl ourished in recent decades, and I have drawn freely on the work of other scholars, though the need to keep footnotes to a minimum has meant that they have not all been acknowledged by name. I began writing this book while teaching at Cambridge, inspired by the example of others in the Faculty of Classics who had writt en books reaching out to a broader audience than that of professional classicists. Th ey, and others like them, have done much to keep Clas- sics on the agenda beyond the university, and I am grateful for their inspiration and example. My thanks go to the three readers for OUP, who made some helpful suggestions and saved me from a number of embarrassing errors; also to my copy editors, Sylvia Jaff rey and, espe- cially, Richard Abrams, who, with cheering good humour, went far beyond the call of duty in the fi nal stages. Hilary O’ Shea and Desiree Kellerman have been encouraging and effi cient in seeing this book through from conception to publication. This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS Introduction 1 A Guide to the Pronunciation of Latin 29 Prelude 31 1 Love, and a Genre 41 2 Hate, Mockery, and the Physical World 71 3 Horace: Th e Sensation of Mediocrity 101 4 Vergil: Th e Unclassical Classic 141 5 Lucan and Seneca: Poets of Apocalypse 181 6 Science Fiction: Lucretius’ D e Rerum Natura and Ovid’s 229 Metamorphoses Epilogue 263 Guide to Further Reading 268 Glossary 270 Index 275 Index of Poems Discussed 278 ix

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Latin is very much alive in the poetry written by the great Latin poets, and this book is about their poetry, their language, and their culture. Fitzgerald shows the reader with little or no knowledge of the Latin language how it works as a unique vehicle for poetic expression and thought. Moving be
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