Second and third year undergraduate courses

Latin for Medieval History

HT520 / HT530

This course will equip students with a basic reading knowledge of Latin. Students will cover the basics of Latin grammar and its specific medieval development, and will be introduced to issues of morphological and syntactic change from classical to medieval forms. The language will be taught entirely from a variety of medieval sources, including chronicles, letters, charters and religious writings, and the context of their production will also be discussed. This will allow students interested in medieval history to begin to approach the source material in its original form, as well as taking a critical view of translated sources for the historian. Changes such as ‘renaissances’ in Latin style, and the development of vernacular literatures will be touched on.

Mode of assessment

This course will be assessed by coursework in the form of translation and commentary on one medieval source passage (approx 2,000 words inclusive) and three hour exam, in which dictionaries will be allowed.

Learning outcomes

• Students will be able to read simple Medieval Latin texts, and to understand the social and cultural context of their production.
• They will be able to take an informed view of translation for historical use, and to understand the role of Latin the vernaculars in the written culture of medieval Europe.

Reading

Kennedy, Shorter Latin Primer, Longman 1962 and subsequent re-editions
J F Collins, A Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin, Catholic University of America Press 1985
K P Harrington Medieval Latin, Chicago 1925, revised J. Pucci 1997
K Sidwell, Reading Medieval Latin, Cambridge 1995