Latin Language and Latin Culture: From Ancient to Modern Times

Roman Literature and its Contexts

by Joseph Farrell

The Latin language is popularly imagined in a number of specific as a masculine language, an imperial language, a classical language, a dead language. This book considers the sources of these metaphors and analyzes their effect on how Latin literature is read. By reading with and more commonly against these metaphors, the book offers a different view of Latin as a language and as a vehicle for cultural practice. The argument ranges over a variety of texts in Latin and texts about Latin from antiquity to the twentieth century.

Genres: Classical Studies, Linguistics, Nonfiction, Classics, Language, History, Philosophy

164 pages, Paperback

First published February 14, 1997

About the author

Joseph Farrell is emeritus Professor of Italian at the University of Strathclyde. He is author of a biography of Dario Fo and has translated several Italian playwrights in addition to various novels.

Reviews

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Farrell isn't boring. And this is pretty much the only quality essential to separating one book from another in today's academic publishing nightmare where the market is inundated with average works that people only fought to get published because it helps secure tenure. In the midst of such unnecessary mediocrity (surely the author's of forced-mediocrity aren't all that happy with the system), Farrell delivers a work that is short, concise, and unendingly fascinating. (But check it out from your local university library because it's an academic hardback and thus it's thirty bucks, which is unbelievable considering it's about 140 pages long.)