| Latin language studies here in the American Midwest remain stronger than
| ever. As Director of Placement in Foreign Languages at Purdue, I have
| seen a yearly upsurge in Latin for the past four years. It is apparently
| a national phenomenon, as there was a major syndicated newspaper piece on
| it a short while ago. And of course in the South it has always been
| strong, as it has been at the better universities. Certainly for anyone who
| wishes to do serious scholarship in medieval anything it is clearly very
| important. How much is enough? Enough to be able to read what you need
| to be able to read in Latin. Who would undertake to write on the Spanish
| Armada without being able to read ships' logs from the period? Dr.
| David A. Flory, Purdue U.
|
As a co-author of a new MA in Medieval Theology programme at Leeds (end
commercial), I had to fight a little with my colleagues to have
language study as part of the programme. Students can
focus on reading medieval theological texts, or more importantly take
courses in reading medieval Latin broadly (the choice is dependant
upon their past training and is possible due to the support of the
Centre for Medieval Studies here). Or, if students do the Byzantine
stream, they can study Greek.
Students find this a new experience (languages? we need to study
languages?); but as someone who struggled through the Latin programme
at Toronto, I can attest to both the difficulty of the task as well
as the enjoyment of its fruits (I often wonder if Augustine
considered putting Latin in his res fruendi column -- okay, I know the
answer to that!).
However, I don't think we should ever repress queries about
translation or questions concerning whether a certain text
makes sense. I have particuarly found it useful to show gobbets to
colleagues who read different kind of texts than I do.
Cheers
Jim
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James R. Ginther
Dept. of Theology and Religious Studies
University of Leeds
Leeds LS2 9JT
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E-mail: Phone: +44.113.233.6749
[log in to unmask] Fax: +44.113.233.3654
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http://www.leeds.ac.uk/trs/trs.html
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