Medieval Latin: Second Edition [Paperback]

K. P. Harrington (Editor), Joseph Pucci (Editor), Alison Goddard Elliott (Introduction)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0226317137 | ISBN-13: 978-0226317137 | Publication Date: November 10, 1997 | Edition: 2nd Revised

K. P. Harrington's Mediaeval Latin, the standard medieval Latin anthology used in the United States since its initial publication in 1925, has now been completely revised and updated for today's students and teachers by Joseph Pucci. This new edition of the classic anthology retains its breadth of coverage, but increases its depth by adding fourteen new selections, doubling the coverage of women writers, and expanding a quarter of the original selections. The new edition also includes a substantive grammatical introduction by Alison Goddard Elliott.

To help place the selections within their wider historical, social, and political contexts, Pucci has written extensive introductory essays for each of the new edition's five parts. Headnotes to individual selections have been recast as interpretive essays, and the original bibliographic paragraphs have been expanded. Reprinted from the best modern editions, the selections have been extensively glossed with grammatical notes geared toward students of classical Latin who may be reading medieval Latin for the first time.

Includes thirty-two full-page plates (with accompanying captions) depicting medieval manuscript and book production.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, Latin --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 702 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 2nd Revised edition (November 10, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226317137
• ISBN-13: 978-0226317137
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #201,837 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

83 of 83 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A disaster, January 2, 2001

By 

Bruce A. McMenomy (Bellevue, WA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Medieval Latin: Second Edition (Hardcover)

Harrington's text has been the backbone of a majority of undergraduate (and beginning graduate) Medieval Latin courses in the United States for several generations now, and it has, despite some serious deficiencies, worn relatively well. The passages were thoughtfully chosen, minimally edited and annotated, and presented with spare introductions providing just enough context to get on with the business of reading. In a field as wide as Medieval Latin, there are bound to be differences of opinion on what should be included, and if one is interested primarily in patristic or diplomatic Latin, it's probably a good idea to look elsewhere. But what was there was mostly adequate. The occasional textual problems were annoying, but fairly infrequent.

Pucci's new edition gives this flawed classic a fatal makeover. The new edition is endowed with a superior introduction and some good grammatical information; the selection of passages is changed from the first edition on more or less rational principles; introductions are enhanced; problematic grammatical constructions are given considerably more annotation. Being pleased with what I saw, and on a short time-budget, I ordered it for a class. Since I had already encountered many of the passages I intended to teach in the first edition, I didn't read them through before ordering the book for my students.

But when I began to teach the class, it became clear that the text itself (which is still, after all, the core of the enterprise) had become a hopeless mess -- such a mess, in fact, that only a textual scholar who doesn't need an introductory book will have enough experience and self-confidence to work past its bizarre readings. In the space of the six or eight passages we went over before the class simply gave up, we encountered many desperate phrases -- and in every instance the new edition had substituted gibberish for Harrington's comprehensible reading. These errors range from the whimsical placement of commas to absurd typographical errors (e.g., Duo instead of Deo). These occur at an alarming and debilitating rate -- not one every few pages, but sometimes several per paragraph. A complete errata-list, I suspect, would constitute a small volume of its own.

One wonders how a competent Medieval Latinist could have produced such a travesty. From the arbitrary and capricious look of the errors, I am led (with some incredulity) to suspect that a copy of Harrington's text was scanned into a computer, corrected without human supervision by a spell-check routine and a Latin wordlist, and then annotated and rushed out the door without ever being proofread by anyone who knew any Latin.

The University of Chicago compromises its credibility with such appalling work, and insults those who buy it in good faith, expecting to learn to read Medieval Latin. It should on no account be inflicted on undergraduates, who typically find the Latin itself challenging enough without having to battle through layers of modern textual corruption. Until they either prepare a corrected second edition (or a third), or simply discard it to return to the first, there are really only two paths available: Beeson's Medieval Latin Primer (not widely known, but still filled with solid passages), and Sidwell's Reading Medieval Latin (passages too short for my taste, but cleanly presented). Both have their drawbacks, and neither quite fills the gap left by the disappearance of Harrington's first edition, but there should be no mistake: Harrington's text is out of print.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Good selections, but erratic notes, November 9, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Medieval Latin: Second Edition (Paperback)

This revision of Harrington's _Medieval Latin_ includes an excellent choice of texts, elegant illustrations, good introductions to individual selections and a useful grammatical introduction. Unfortunately, Pucci's notes to the Latin passages are often vague or misleading and are riddled with elementary errors. I found teaching from this book an exercise in frustration. Keith Sidwell's _Reading Medieval Latin_ remains the best choice both for college courses and for self-study.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars it's ok..., May 4, 2010

By 

A. Fandl "classics nerd" (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Medieval Latin: Second Edition (Paperback)

This is the required textbook for my grad program's Medieval Latin class. I am not a medievalist; to a classicist, this seems like a decent selection of ML authors. Apparently the first edition is superior, but the second edition has a much different selection of authors. The notes in this text are sometimes helpful, but frequently incorrect or useless. The typos in the Latin texts and in the notes drive my professor insane.