Abstract
This paper presents the first scholarly analysis of The Comic Latin Grammar by Percival Leigh, a satirical textbook of Latin grammar published in London in 1840. Sections I and II analyze the role of Latin education and the rapid publication of Latin grammar books during the nineteenth century. Sections III and IV conduct close readings of the Comic Latin Grammar to assess its techniques of parody and allusion. I conclude that the textbook achieves its satire of Latin learning by embedding two tiers of humor in its lessons designed for two types of readers: those with and without a background in Classical education. In this way, Leigh uses parody as a mechanism for constructing and enforcing social boundaries, but also satirizes the use of Latin as a shibboleth for polite society.
Highlights
This paper presents the first scholarly analysis of The Comic Latin Grammar by Percival Leigh, a satirical textbook of Latin grammar published in London in 1839-40
I conclude that the textbook achieves its satire of Latin learning by embedding two tiers of humor in its lessons designed for two types of readers: those with and without a background in Classical education
Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine reviewed the book as “the most richly comic work [...] we have ever seen” and praised its ability to “beguile [the reader] into a competent knowledge of Latin grammar.”41 Another periodical, The Literary World, predicted success for the book: “The public will buy it, and, what is more, read and enjoy it: its pages really contain a good deal of useful matter.”42 Copies of the Comic Grammar appeared in the 1850 Catalogue of the Mercantile Index of New York, as well as the 1890 British Museum Catalogue of Printed Books
Summary
In the decades between 1820 and 1880, the study of Latin in Europe and the Americas benefited from a surge of new grammars published in rapid succession. While the performances were “enormously successful,” critics from publications like The Literary Gazette and Universal Review could at once describe the burlesques as degradations of the Classical tradition and too clever by half for the unschooled.22 These institutionalized attitudes towards the Classics provide a helpful context for understanding the publication of grammars during this period; they clarify how those at the top of the pedagogical pyramid justified continued instruction in a language with little practical value. The second nuance that Skilton brings to studies of Classical education in Victorian England is his claim that social status and communal intellectual identity were forged as much through the classroom experience as through the knowledge of Latin itself.. It provides an example of the comedic techniques that other Victorian authors employed in their mockery of the Classics, as we observe in the Comic Grammar as well
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