The Student's Catullus (Oklahoma Series in Classical Culture) (Latin Edition) [Paperback]

Gaius Valerius Catullus (Author), Daniel H. Garrison (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Oklahoma Series in Classical Culture | Publication Date: July 1995

Though his audacious erotic and satrical verses survived the Middle Ages in only a single copy, Catullus has become in this century a standard author in the college Latin curriculum, ranking with Virgil, Horace, and Ovid.
This new, annotated Latin edition now makes these famous poems more accessible than ever to students of Catullus' own language. The Student's Catullus places its emphasis on understanding the original Latin text rather than merely translating it into English. A complete Latin-English vocabulary explains the meaning of Catullus' words; notes to each poem illuminate the meaning of his language, with explanations of word choice, word order, sound effects, and metric artistry. Historical and literary allusions are also explained, with the result that students enter deeper into the poet's world than the best English translation can suggest. The Student's Catullus makes it clear why we still read Catullus in Latin.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, Latin

About the Author

Daniel H. Garrison is Associate Professor of Classics in Northwestern University. He received an A.B. degree in Classics from Harvard, an M.A. degree in Greek from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and a Ph.D degree in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of many other books and articles on the classics. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 228 pages
• Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press; 2nd edition (July 1995)
• Language: Latin
• ISBN-10: 0806127635
• ISBN-13: 978-0806127637
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,632,791 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Verona's Dark Prince is Back! Way to Go, Daniel., December 12, 1999

By 

Judd Michael Conrad - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Student's Catullus (Oklahoma Series in Classical Culture) (Latin Edition) (Paperback)

Learned, exciting and accessible, Garrison's edition of Catullus is the best in over a century (since Elmer Merrill's Carmina in 1893). Garrison has decided not to obstruct a classic's own text, instead allowing Gaius Valerius Catullus to speak for himself--yet offering grammatical advice, relevant historical and political information, and commentary only when absolutely needed. Thanks, Daniel! I'll be keeping my edition for a long time. Here the text and the Poet are given the highest consideration.

Even a Latin scholar who's had the opportunity to take only 100 level classes will be able to read and enjoy all 116 poems--and that's important.

But remember--there's nothing wrong reading Catullus, or any Roman author, in translation. Some translations of Catullus are a little dense for first-timers, but Goold and Cornish's are really good.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Flawed..., May 31, 2000

By 

[e-mail] - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Student's Catullus (Oklahoma Series in Classical Culture) (Latin Edition) (Paperback)

Garrison's book is not the soundest text for people reading Catullus in Latin. For one thing, the book does a disservice in "titling" every poem in the collection with an English one-liner...this goes a long way towards influencing the reader before s/he even reads the Latin. Second, there is no critical apparatus with the Latin text...and with a poet like Catullus, for whom textual issues are more than marginally important, this is a lamentable loss...even beginning Latin students can be sophisticated enough not to think that the text of an author was handed down by Jupiter on golden tablets...or in this case, in a forest green paperback. Fordyce's 1961 Oxford commentary remains standard for the poems he covers (and contrary to popular lore he did not leave the others out out of a sense of Puritanism but rather because the Oxford Press at the time thought the book would sell to a larger market with the obscene poems omitted)...there is also Merrill, still in print (he has every poem)...and for more accomplished Latinists, we now have Thomson's big 1997 volume. If you can find it, Kenneth Quinn's 1970 commentary on the whole corpus is also worth a close look...

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a fine latin edition of Catullus, December 2, 1999

By 

Al Kihano (Iskandria) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Student's Catullus (Oklahoma Series in Classical Culture) (Latin Edition) (Paperback)

Catullus is lovely. We should all read him once a week, lest we lose our exuberance and become prudes.

This paperback edition is excellent for students of Latin, but beware that there are no English translations. There are, however, extensive and high-quality notes by Garrison, including grammatical explanations and vocabulary.