Latin Quotations Research Articles

О латинском произношении (некоторые методические рекомендации для студентов-итальянистов)

Students of the Italian Сulture would often face certain difficulties with the pronunciation of Latin quotations in their essays. The author addresses this issue, aiming at the educated lay audience untrained in either linguistics or Classical philology. He provides an outline of the history of the pronunciation from the earliest Roman times to the present day, including that of the Ecclesiastical Latin and national pronunciations of Latin. Finally, he gives some practical advice on the pronunciation for the conference paper presentations and the like.

Latin in Modern Fiction: Who Says It's a Dead Language?: Aldous Huxley

Latin in Modern Fiction:Who Says It's a Dead Language?: Aldous Huxley Henryk Hoffmann Keywords ablative of means/instrument, ancient history, ancient Rome, aphorism, axiom, classical studies, comparative linguistics, deponent verb, derivative, gerund, gerundive, grammar, indicative mood, infinitive, jussive verb, Latin quotation, Latin reference, lexicon, maxim, motto, mythology, predicate accusative, predicate nominative, Proto-Indo-European, proverb, Romance languages, roots, semantics, subjunctive mood, syntax, system of cases, system of tenses, tradition The goal of my Latin in Modern Fiction: Who Says It's a Dead Language? (Wilmington, DE, and Malaga, Spain: Vernon Press, 2021) is to prove Latin's enduring "vitality" and importance by demonstrating how ubiquitous, conspicuous and "strong" it still is in modern Western culture. In order to do so, I bring to bear my long experience as a Latin educator and expertise in English philology on cataloguing, explaining and interpreting Latin quotations and references in a multitude of literary works by mainstream, mystery and western authors, written in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and set in the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The quotations have been extracted from novels, short stories and plays that I have read over a period of about thirty years. The three areas of fiction constituting the main scope of the book are indicative of my major interest and preference, as well as the subject matter of my extensive researches, both prior and current, the former related to my already published books. The writers offering the most impressive contributions to the thesis are featured in the three parts of the main body; those with lesser input are listed (along with pertinent citations) in the Appendix. While E. Christian Kopff's amazing treaty The Devil Knows Latin: Why America Needs the Classical Tradition (1999) and R. J. Schork's excellent work Latin and Roman Culture in Joyce (1997) admittedly share some goals with this book, they hardly constitute any competition to it due to their significantly different scopes. The Latin references presented in my book, all listed in the Index (the size of which alone is a strong argument for the thesis), can be classified according to their theme or provenance into the following categories: literature, philosophy, history, mythology, [End Page 361] culture, education, religion, medicine, law, sciences, politics, military and others. The last category covers general, everyday expressions, which include most of the proverbs. The category that has collected the largest number of examples is, unsurprisingly, religion, and the authors that provided extensive or numerous citations of that kind include F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Hilton, John Steinbeck, Irwin Shaw, Morris L. West, Flannery O'Connor, John Updike, John Gregory Dunne, John Irving, Dermot McEvoy, Ellery Queen, William X. Kienzle, Joe Gores and Joseph Finder. While the legal phraseology is rather obvious—such references dominate primarily the entries on mystery writers—the category most interesting to Latin students is probably literature. In addition to some citations from Ovid and Lucretius, the reader can enjoy numerous quotations from Vergil (to be found mostly in the entries on Hilton, Thomas Wolfe, Julio Cortázar, Paul Levine, Ian Rankin, Larry McMurtry), Horace (Wolfe, Steinbeck, Emerson Hough) and Catullus (Aldous Huxley, Wolfe). Of interest should also be the references to other famous names related to ancient Rome, such as Marcus Tullius Cicero, a statesman, lawyer and scholar who has been quoted by Paul Levine, and Publius Cornelius Tacitus, a historian and politician admired, ad nauseam, by a character in Paul Horgan's novel A Distant Trumpet. The prospective readers of the book include all Latin students and educators; consequently, it should be sought out by practically all educational institutions worldwide. Here, with the permission of my publisher, I reprint the entry on Aldous Huxley. ALDOUS HUXLEY (1894–1963) Born on July 26, 1894, in Godalming, Surrey, England, Aldous (Leonard) Huxley was educated at Eton College, an independent boarding school for boys, and studied English literature at Balliol College, Oxford. Deeply interested in philosophy, he started writing as a teenager, but his first published novel was Crome Yellow (1921). His other major novels from that period include Those Barren Leaves (1925), Point Counter Point (1928) and Brave New World (1932). In 1937, Huxley moved to the United...

The Afterlife of St Cuthbert: Place, Texts and Ascetic Tradition, 690–1500

The Afterlife of St Cuthbert: Place, Texts and Ascetic Tradition, 690–1500

Falling Knights: Sir Gawain in Pre and Post Malory Arthurian Tradition

The present study traces the development of Sir Gawain’s traits in the Arthurian legend through an analysis of Arthurian literature in early medieval works, in transition, and in modern cycle. It aims to show what makes Sir Gawain a multiple character and how his plastic character has appealed to the literary, political, and social taste of the time of his creation and recreation. The focus will be upon the roles that the new characteristics of Sir Gawain should fulfil and the reasons which stand behind this transition in his character.The study examines the representation of Sir Gawain as a heroic knight in mainly three texts from the medieval and modern English Arthurian tradition: Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae Sir Thomas Malory’s De Morte Arthur, Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. Some references are made to other contemporary texts. These texts range from literary to history, providing a broad overview of the many ways in which history and romance approaches the question of the roles of knighthood and chivalry through the figure of Sir Gawain.By exploring these narratives in their historical and social contexts, the present study explains why Sir Gawain maintains certain characteristics across a particularly eventful period in English history, as well as why certain characteristics change drastically. It will also offer new insights about public perception of medieval notions of knighthood and chivalry.All translated quotations from Historia Regum Britanniae are taken from Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of Kings of Britain, translated by Sebastian Evans (London: Dent, 1963). All Latin quotations from Wace’s Roman de Brut: A History of the British are taken fromWace, Wace’s Roman de Brut: A History of the British, edited by Judith Weiss (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2002). All quotations from the Arthurian Section of Layamon’s Brut are taken from Layamon, Layamon’s Arthur: the Arthurian Section of Layamon’s Brut, edited by W.R.J. Barron and S.C. Weinberg (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2001). All quotations from Idylls of the King are taken from Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the king, edited by J. M. Gray (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983).

Latin in Modern Fiction: Who Says it’s a Dead Language? by Henryk Hoffmann

Reviewed by: Latin in Modern Fiction: Who Says it’s a Dead Language? by Henryk Hoffmann Kristian L. Lorenzo Latin in Modern Fiction: Who Says it’s a Dead Language? By Henryk Hoffmann. Wilmington, DE: Vernon Press, 2021. Pp. 306. Hardback, $61.00. ISBN: 978-1-62273-949-3. Henryk Hoffmann’s Latin in Modern Fiction: Who Says it’s a Dead Language? is not a book on literature but a reference book on the Latin language as presented in samples of modern fiction. In producing such a work, Hoffmann has both capitalized on his many years of teaching Latin in the US and played to his literary wheelhouse, since thus far he is the author of six other such works all of which, unlike the volume under review, focus on various aspects of the movie industry. In his conclusion Hoffman states that “The goal of this publication was to prove the prevalence of the Latin language in modern fiction by presenting pertinent references encountered in fiction books written in the twentieth or twenty-first centuries and set in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries” (255). By the terms “prevalence” and “pertinent” Hoffman means that the sheer number of his references, their presence in multiple genres and literary forms produced over so many years help to prove that Latin is not a dead language due to its ubiquity, popularity and hence importance. Hoffmann gathered these references over twenty-five years of reading (1995–2020) ca. 1200 works—approximately 220 of which contained Latin references—either chosen at random or for use in his other projects, and thus Hoffmann’s own literary taste is the key limiting factor. Those people familiar with James Joyce’s use of Latin references to embellish his prose can rest easy. This project does not duplicate the comprehensive coverage provided by R. J. Schork’s book, Latin and Roman Culture in Joyce (1997). In addition, Hoffmann considers it a modest supplement/addendum “offering numerous examples and further evidence in support of” the “amazing” conclusions Professor E. Christian Kopff sets forth in his book, The Devil Knows Latin: Why America needs the Classical Tradition (1999) (xviii-xix). The effect(s) of this last point will, of course, depend on how each individual familiar with Kopff’s book views the ideas expressed therein. As this reviewer has not yet read The Devil Knows Latin, I can say nothing further on this topic. After a list of figures and a preface Hoffmann presents his most pertinent references in forty-five entries subdivided by genre into three main parts: Latin in Mainstream Literature; Latin in Crime and Detective Fiction; and Latin in Frontier and [End Page 124] Western Fiction. Each entry is a whole unto itself but linked by helpful cross-references to other entries where necessary. Each one also contains erudite explanations and interpretations of the relevant Latin quotations. An appendix listing fiction books by other authors with minor/few Latin references and then a conclusions section follows the main parts. Acknowledgements, a bibliography and an index of only the Latin references quoted in the book itself close out this volume. It should be noted that there are neither footnotes nor endnotes and, as Hoffmann states in his acknowledgements, he made ample use of Wikipedia and IMDb to find and/or verify information regarding the authors of the books included in the entries. The three genre-driven main parts are where Hoffmann most clearly articulates his evidence. Part I, Latin in Mainstream Literature, contains twenty-one entries beginning with Samuel Hopkins Adams (1871–1958), ending with Dermot McEvoy (1950–) and including such well-known authors as F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940), John Steinbeck (1902–1968) and Umberto Eco (1932–2016). Part II, Latin in Crime and Detective Fiction, contains twenty entries starting with Raymond Chandler (1888–1959), stopping with Dennis Lehane (1965–) and including other important authors such as Brett Halliday (1904–1977), Tom Kakonis (1930–2018) and Elizabeth George (1949-). And Part III, Latin in Frontier and Western Fiction, is comprised of only four entries: Emerson Hough (1857–1920), Paul Horgan (1903–1995), Will Henry/Clay Fisher (1912–1991) and Larry McMurtry (1936-). This...

Biblical Commentary and Translation in Later Medieval England: Experiments in Interpretation

Biblical Commentary and Translation in Later Medieval England: Experiments in Interpretation

Philologia Sacra und Auslegung der Heiligen Schrift: Studien zum Werk des lutherischen Barocktheologen Salomon Glassius (1593–1656) by Armin Wenz

Reviewed by: Philologia Sacra und Auslegung der Heiligen Schrift: Studien zum Werk des lutherischen Barocktheologen Salomon Glassius (1593–1656) by Armin Wenz Benjamin T. G. Mayes Philologia Sacra und Auslegung der Heiligen Schrift: Studien zum Werk des lutherischen Barocktheologen Salomon Glassius (1593–1656). By Armin Wenz. Historia Hermeneutica, Series Studia 20. Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2020. 892 pp. Salomon Glassius (1593–1656), a student of Johann Gerhard (1582–1637), served as a theology professor at Jena and then, for most of his career, a church superintendent. He is remembered for his extensive hermeneutical work, Philologia Sacra (1623–1636, with expanded editions thereafter), in which not only the literal sense of scripture is affirmed, but also the "mystical sense," which includes typology and allegory as senses of scripture beside the literal sense, intended by the primary author of scripture (God). Beyond this, Glassius published numerous sermons and expositions of the person and work of Christ from the Old Testament. Armin Wenz covers Glassius' understanding of "holy philology," a devotional-pious approach to academic exegesis, the doctrine of scripture, style, grammar, rhetoric, and hermeneutics, including the literal and mystical senses of scripture. Thereafter, chapters summarize Glassius' exegetical writings and the many metaphors, types, and allegories of scripture expounded by him. Finally, Wenz considers Glassius' place in reception history and contemporary hermeneutics and biblical studies. Wenz deals more with the contemporary usefulness and defensibility of Glassius' theology than with Glassius' place within the flow of seventeenth-century Lutheran exegesis. Not only does he describe what was, he also searches for the applicability and usefulness of Glassius' exegesis for learned Christian handling of the biblical texts as the Word of God. [End Page 94] Glassius sets forth the same doctrine as does Johann Gerhard with regard to scripture's canonization, inspiration, clarity, perfection/sufficiency, efficacity, and authority. For example, both Glassius and Gerhard include James, Hebrews, Jude, and Revelation in the canon as apostolic and inspired, in respectful disagreement with Luther. Yet Wenz shows how Glassius presents scripture not just as the divinely-inspired revelation of God's will and work, but as much more. For Glassius, the incarnation of the Son of God shows that created language and metaphors can be used about God; the condescension in the incarnation and God's sacramental communication with his people are expressed through a plethora of metaphors and types (184). "[T]he scripture of the Old and New Testaments is the canonical document handed down in the Israelitic people of God and in the New Testament church of Jews and Gentiles in human speech, and is the sacramental medium of testamentary, divine self-obligation and appropriation of salvation. This mediality is constitituted by the triune God as author of scripture accommodating himself into the variety of scripture's words and images, in such a way that the divine properties and attributes are to be ascribed or really imparted also to scripture and its words, without scripture thereby becoming identical with God" (788, my translation). This view of the biblical text then requires a certain handling of it: "The starting point and criterion of the exegetical methods is … the perception of the trinitarian contextuality of the biblical texts with their various canon-internal relations and external, sacramental effects" (824, my translation). Wenz is a pastor, and he highlights the pastoral aspects of Glassius' hermeneutics—exegesis is for preaching and the individual pastoral care of souls. This book can be useful to preachers also as a catalog of biblical imagery, typology, and allegory. Wenz has organized and described all the biblical imagery used by Glassius, drawn from all his works. Due to many untranslated Latin quotations and Wenz's intricate German academic writing style, some potential readers may be turned away from this book. I hope that is not the case, since Glassius is worth knowing, and Wenz knows him better than anyone. [End Page 95] Benjamin T. G. Mayes Concordia Theological Seminary Fort Wayne, Indiana Copyright © 2022 Johns Hopkins University Press and Lutheran Quarterly, Inc.

Językowe ślady starożytnej kultury grecko-rzymskiej w powieściach kryminalnych Marka Krajewskiego

The description and classification of linguistic references to the classical (Graeco-Roman) antiquity used in eight M. Krajewski’s crime novels are the main basis for the present paper. The conclusions form an attempt to look in general at the purposefulness of their use and the functions they serve, while referencing certain rules and tendencies related to crime writing and popular literature as such. The research results put forward are mostly based on the body of linguistic examination drawing from lexicology, phraseme studies, including phraseology, and onomastics. In the novels (about 600 fragments), the two-pronged (textual and paratextual) references to classical antiquity materialise in three layers: phraseme-related (polyword constructions in the form of Latin quotations and set phrases – reproductions, innovations and nonce words), lexical (Latin lexemes, eponyms and eponymisms), and onimic (primary and secondary proper names of ancient provenance among them).

Latin Aphoristics in the Poetics of F. M. Dostoevsky

. The article analyzes the role of Latinisms in the literary and journalistic texts of F. M. Dostoevsky. By virtue of his education, the writer was wellacquainted with Latin literature, which undoubtedly affected his poetics. Multilingualism becomes one of the polyphonic tools of the latter: combination of languages performs a characterological function, enriching the characters’ speech portrait and expanding the linguocultural context of their worldview. Latin quotations are either provided by Dostoevsky as independent sentences, or integrated into the text and adjusted to the Russian syntax and grammar. Truncated or modified aphorisms integrated in the characters’ words are an attempt to substantiate their beliefs through an appeal to cultural constants. Most often, a change of this sort takes on a parodic character and turns into an alteration of meanings and a denial of spiritual values. Expressions from the Catholic culture occupy a special place in Dostoevsky’s poetics. On the one hand, Latin Catholic names complement the figurative embodiment of the Christian faith. On the other hand, while being the object of irony, ridicule or criticism, for Dostoevsky church Latin formulas illustrate an important topic in Roman Catholic Christianity: using the example of the so-called “Roman question,” the writer develops the idea of the life and death of religion in Europe.

The Implementation of the Conception of Friendship on the Basis of Comparative Structural-semantic Analysis of English and Russian Proverbs

The article is devoted to the study of the conception of friendship based on the results of comparative structural-semantic analysis of English and Russian proverbs about friendship. The study includes two complementary steps. The first step consists in formulating the main aspects of the conception of friendship. The second consists in comparing fragments of this proverbial field, which made it possible to explore the implementation of eight aspects of the conception of friendship on the material studied. The clarification of similarities and differences made it possible to identify the specific national and cultural characters of thinking and mentality of the two non-related peoples towards understanding of friendship. The relevance of the study is determined by the novelty of the proposed approach to the study of the conception of friendship based on the comparative structural and semantic analysis of proverbs of two linguistic-cultural ethnic groups, as well as the insufficient knowledge of proverbs expressing the concept of “friendship” from the point of view of identifying their figurative and motivational basis, figurative means (metaphor, metonymy, comparison, personification, gradation, hyperbole, irony, allegory, antithesis), semantics of lexical components, syntactic structures (repetitions, parallelism, ellipsis, compression), expressive means, as well as rhythmic organization. There were selected and systematized similar and unique meanings of English and Russian proverbs as a result of research on the material of these languages. The analysis of these meanings allowed us to explore conception of friendship, thereby providing the basis for deeper rethinking both the conception and the proverbial material. As the part of the study there were observed differences in understanding of a person, personal relationships with others, mutual help, etc. These differences are largely due to the different origins of English and Russian proverbs. Most of the English proverbs are short sayings, which were formed under the influence of Latin expressions and quotations from Bible. Most of the Russian proverbs are peasant by origin and therefore they are closely connected with a specific and imaginative perception of the world. Their expressiveness is much higher at the expense of using the means of oral folk creativity. This analysis made it possible to reveal the role of linguistic means in expressing the mentality of the representatives of both peoples.

Strepitu belli propelluntur artes: Dostoevsky’s Latin Aphorism

The article examines the Latin aphorism Strepitu belli propelluntur artes, which is found twice in Dostoevsky’s notebooks. The spelling and translation of the aphorism, its grammatical and stylistic structure, as well as the possible sources of the Latin quotation are elucidated. The expression in question is contextually unrelated to the Russian text and functions as an independent statement. The semantic connection of the aphorism with the content of the pages where it is found is revealed. The Latin expression marks the theme of war. The juxtaposition of war and art inherent in the aphorism and traditionally understood as the impossibility of their coexistence, is interpreted by the writer as a paradox: through his paradoxical hero, Dostoevsky fosters the idea that only during a war true art awakens souls and mobilizes a society’s spiritual needs. Subsequently, on his own behalf, the writer speaks about the nature of true art, which arouses people by its lofty ideals in the times of peace. However, the social reality is such that the only way for a spiritually unhealthy society to awaken and cleanse itself is a war over a noble idea. The Latin quotation is a key link in the writer’s reasoning, and it becomes an instrument of his argumentation.

Plutarco y Flavio Josefo en la obra del jesuita Matías Sánchez: el concepto clásico de la historia

This paper attempts to approach a historical work of 18th century from the classical perspective. This is a manuscript, fortunately edited, that describes the vicissitudes of the JesusCompany in the Canary Islands, written by the jesuit born in Granada, Matías Sánchez. This workcontains many Latin quotations and various references to characters from Classical Antiquity. But also in his prologue appear the criteria followed by this jesuit in the composition of his work, where he is linked to Plutarch and especially to Josephus

RESPONSE TO W SEBOTHOMA

Responding to Sebothoma’s paper is no easy task. In the first place, the paper ranges through a full spread of disciplines, from Old Testament studies to church history, philosophy to ideological discourse, with a fair sprinkling of Latin quotations. Along the way, he addresses a large number of issues, like Marxism, capitalism, ideology, ethics, justice and mercy. Truth be told, one could respond to any one of these issues-but that would not be fair to the paper as a whole. Holding the paper together is a central theme, which although it almost disappears at places, returns again and again.

Formuła wyrażania szacunku w strukturze osiemnastowiecznego listu polskiego

The Honorificative Formula in 18th c. Polish Letters
 The paper discusses, from the formal, semantic, pragma- and sociolinguistic point of view, the honorificative formula that constituted one of the components of the final part of an epistolary Polish text of the 18th century. Most commonly, it took the shape of a conventionalized phrase which consisted of the preposition z (‘with’), an adjective, and a noun; e.g. z prawdziwym szacunkiem ‘with true respect’. The formula was syntactically dependent, as it was part of a larger whole – nearly always the subscription, i.e. the broadly understood signature of the author of the letter. The lexical composition of the formula showed considerable diversity. The nouns that constituted it include estymacja ‘esteem’, poważenie ‘reverence’, szacunek ‘respect’, weneracja ‘veneration’, and others. The attributes that described the main stem of the formula were also characterized by notable semantic diversity. Moreover, the honorificative formula could also appear in the form of a Latin quotation, e.g. profundo cultu. The usage of the formula depended on social and situational factors, namely it was used in letters to people of equal or higher social status (e.g. to members of princely families), as well as in highly official situations.

Christ’s Holy Week Sermons: Women’s Preaching and its Oral and Written Sources in Late-medieval Valencia

This article begins by reviewing speculation that Isabel de Villena preached to her nuns in the Santa Trinitat convent. The article then examines the nature of women’s preaching, relating it to female verbal authority expressed in the Vita Christi. It draws evidence from the sermons recorded from other female preachers, such as Hildegard of Bingen, and also from male vernacular preachers such as the Valencian St Vincent Ferrer, as well as from the medieval ars praedicandi in the Peninsula. After contextualizing possible sermonizing in Isabel de Villena’s work, the article turns to the Vita Christi to present evidence that Isabel embedded her own sermons, considering whether they might have been preached in the convent and subsequently embedded in the text. To do this, it examines the words of the Christ preaching to the disciples in Holy Week, tracing the sources for Villena’s Latin quotations. It examines convent records to establish when and where sermons were heard during Holy Week in Valencian convents. It discovers that Villena’s preaching is not traceable to standard written Vita Christi sources, but rather takes orally delivered liturgy as its starting point.

Dagli altari alla polvere. Stilicone da parens Augusti a semibarbarus proditor

The aim of this paper is to recall the life of general Stilicho through propaganda, and to show how the image Stilicho struggled to create and preserve was manipulated by his political enemies after his death. Thanks to Claudianus' poetry and his own political craftiness Stilicho had created the image of the perfect soldier in charge, loyal to the Emperor, to whom he was in fact a “second father”. The paper mentions some of the various attestations of Stilicho pater of Onorius and, therefore, of the Empire. Nonetheless, right after Stilicho’s fall, Jerome, Rutilius and Orosius created a new image of the general through the reiteration of terms such as “traitor” and “semibarbarus”. The purpose was to erase the glorious profile created by Claudianus and to blame Stilicho as the cause of a political crisis of witch he was not responsible at all. He had been, in fact, the unique defender of a fragile equilibrium between Rome and Alaric. Nevertheless, the need to find a scapegoat of Rome’s decay, led to the accusation that Stilicho was even responsible of events that followed his own death. Ultimately, the paper aims to provide a number of Latin quotations concerning the history of positive and negative propaganda surrounding Stilicho's life and death.

Studium sine calamo somnium: John Adams’s Favorite Maxim

Of the hundreds of Latin quotations and phrases American Founding Father John Adams employed in his prolific writings and correspondence, none appears more often than the pithy maxim, studium sine ...

Aristotle’s Ethics and Medieval Philosophy: Moral Goodness and Practical Wisdom by Anthony Celano

Reviewed by: Aristotle’s Ethics and Medieval Philosophy: Moral Goodness and Practical Wisdom by Anthony Celano Matthew R. McWhorter Aristotle’s Ethics and Medieval Philosophy: Moral Goodness and Practical Wisdom. Anthony Celano. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016, 272 pp. Anthony Celano’s Aristotle’s Ethics and Medieval Philosophy is a recent collection of studies from a veteran scholar of medieval philosophy who has conducted more than thirty years of research into the ethical doctrine of Aristotle and its reception by thirteenth-century Latin thinkers. Celano observes that Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics is the seminal kind of cultural achievement that admits of numerous interpretations and developments (7). At the same time, Celano promotes a central thesis in this volume that underscores that the content of the Ethics must be differentiated from how it was understood by medieval commentators. The hermeneutical key that should be used to understand Aristotle’s original doctrine, Celano contends, is one that recognizes practical wisdom (phronesis) as having a broader scope than that which was admitted by the medieval commentators, a scope that includes the ability to originate moral norms (viii–ix). In contrast, Aristotle’s medieval commentators were influenced in their reading of the Ethics by the natural law doctrine found in Scripture and Patristic thinkers (5) and as found in the works of Cicero and Seneca (238). The medieval commentators, Celano maintains, read Aristotle with an “acceptance of natural law and synderesis” and, due to these presuppositions, subsequently “transform Aristotle’s Ethics from one based upon a human standard into one that depends upon a divine foundation” (viii). The interpretational result is a truncated understanding of practical wisdom that is no longer recognized as able to originate “moral universals,” that is restricted to the prudential ability to apply the “eternal principles of action” (ix). Elsewhere, Celano refers to this as “the evolution from practical reason to prudence” (241). He points to Albert the Great as the primary medieval thinker who significantly restricted the scope of practical wisdom in this regard (169). Celano’s volume is divided into nine chapters. The work includes selections from Aristotle’s Greek and extensive Latin quotations, as well as frequent citation of relevant English and international secondary sources. Celano begins his study by briefly outlining certain moral topics that can affect one’s interpretation of the Nicomachean Ethics. These topics include how one understands the nature of happiness (eudaimonia), the relation of Aristotle’s ethical doctrine to a natural moral law, and the structure of moral acts. Celano then provides a longer treatment of the issue of happiness in connection [End Page 1430] with Aristotle’s doctrine of practical wisdom. The study then shifts and proceeds chronologically through the works of important thirteenth-century thinkers. His third chapter begins this chronological survey by focusing on William of Auxerre and Philip the Chancellor. The fourth chapter examines commentaries on the Ethics authored prior to 1248 (an anonymous commentary, a commentary ascribed to Robert Kilwardby, and the pseudo-Pecham commentary). Celano then dedicates two chapters to Albert the Great and his treatment of Aristotle’s Ethics. This discussion is followed by a chapter focused on Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure, and then a chapter examining two late-thirteenth-century commentaries, one of which is ascribed to Parisian arts master Radulphus Brito. Celano closes the volume with a short concluding chapter that returns to discuss in part the themes outlined in his first chapter (namely, the issues of natural law and practical wisdom). Celano states that he developed this book out of a desire to understand what he describes as Aristotle’s two different accounts of happiness that are found in separate sections of the Nicomachean Ethics (vii). These distinct accounts, Celano maintains, also indicate different understandings of human goodness (23). He contends that one account, in book 1, describes happiness as resulting from a combination of contemplative and practical activities (2). Reading the Ethics in light of this first account results in what Celano (appropriating terminology from W. F. R. Hardie) calls the “inclusive” interpretation of Aristotle’s doctrine of happiness (2 and 16). In contrast, a second account that Aristotle provides, in book 10, describes happiness as the result...

Secretary a in Ellesmere's Latin Quotations

Abstract The occasional appearance of the secretary graph for minuscule a in the Latin Quotations provided in the Ellesmere manuscript as annotations to the Canterbury Tales is not (as previously characterized) random. More than 99% of its appearances occur in passages where El shared an exemplar with Gg. The likelihood that those annotations were copied into El from its exemplars is therefore very high, and the likelihood that such annotations derive from a Chaucerian intent is significantly increased. Those facts have important repercussions for our understanding not only of the origins and transmission of the annotations but of the textual nature of the Canterbury Tales.

Montaigne in Transit: Essays in Honour of Ian Maclean. Edited by Neil Kenny, Richard Scholar, and Wes Williams

This is an impressive collection of essays by Ian Maclean’s colleagues and students, a future landmark study like Ian Maclean and I. D. McFarlane’s earlier edited book, Montaigne: Essays in Memory of Richard Sayce (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982). The book grew out of a series of meetings of contributors, and this has produced an exceptionally well conceived and coherent collection. It focuses on the creation and consumption of the Essais through two pairs of critical concepts — genesis and production, and diffusion and reception — which the contributors explore and question, offering a subtle and complicated view of book and reception history and rethinking the ordinary limits of intertextuality in the process. Chapters examine how the Essais move forwards and backwards in time, how they anticipate and rewrite themes and commonplaces, and how they continue to speak to readers today. The book’s theme, defined by the editors in their Introduction as ‘the “transit” of [Montaigne’s] work through time, space, language, discipline, and genre’ (p. 2), builds on important work on movement in the Essais, while allowing time and space for innovative and varied methodologies and techniques of reading, from Terence Cave’s cognitive criticism (deployed to explore how Montaigne’s embodied thought is enacted on the page) to Warren Boutcher’s division of ‘Des cannibales’ into rhetorical periods, showing the shape of Montaigne’s Ciceronian training more clearly to unversed modern readers. Intertextuality is persuasively re-imagined as influence, buried or explicit, in many of the chapters: Rowan Tomlinson on Angelo Poliziano’s eclectic humanism and its overlooked undertow; Kathy Eden on Erasmus’s rhetoric of the face; and Emma Herdman on the provocations and pleasures of Juvenal for women readers. Other chapters explore the effects and mutations of the Essais over time: Kate Tunstall on the power of the will and of the imagination in Diderot, Montaigne, and Augustine; and Timothy Chesters on Flaubert’s reading of the Journal de voyage. A real strength of the collection is its geographical reach, covering responses to the Essais in Germany and Britain: Valerie Worth-Stylianou on the treatment of Montaigne’s Latin quotations by his English translator, John Florio, and his French editor, Marie de Gournay; John O’Brien on Christoph Besold’s reading of the Essais as part of a shared intellectual and legal tradition; Ingrid De Smet on Isaac D’Israeli’s reading of Montaigne, refracted through translations, collections of ana, and compilations; Kathryn Murphy on Montaigne and Robert Burton’s shared interest in the particular; and Colin Barrow on Montaignian moments of reflection and the performance of thought in Shakespeare. Others offer a thematic focus, exploring the flexibility of a theme and how it is turned over and inside out in the Essais’s meandering progress: Chimène Bateman on how marriage is questioned and problematized; and Frank Lestringant on the shifts and mingling of vanity, travel, and writing. As Ian Maclean points out in his Afterword, many of these contributions feature the ‘triangulation’ of the Essais with a reader and a shared antecedent (p. 259), fracturing the familiar story of sources and intertexts. This rich and rigorous collection is a proud tribute to the different directions and approaches inspired by Ian Maclean’s work, and a valuable addition to Montaigne and early modern studies.