 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Trade in Annus Mirabilis: More Latin for Everyday Life for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Plus, get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
With its user-friendly, non-academic style this book is of interest to anyone learning Latin. Looking at topics ranging from Ancient Roman curses found at Bath and a birthday invitation from Hadrian's Wall to fascinating extracts from post-Renaissance Latinists like Descartes, Annus Mirabilis picks up where Annus Horribilis left off. It explores the joys of Latin poetry via Medieval lyrics and verse epitaphs. Letters reveal the gossip of emperors and the passion of lovers. Other passages show that Latin was the language in which some of the most important scientific and philosophical ideas of the modern age were expressed. Featuring many previously unpublished texts, all accompanied by extensive notes, full English translations and an appendix of useful grammar, if anyone asks 'Why do you want to learn Latin?', Annus Mirabilis provides the answer: because Latin is so much more than just the dead language of a fallen empire.
From the Author
This is the 'sequel' to ANNUS HORRIBILIS: LATIN FOR EVERYDAY LIFE -- but it is not just more of the same. Several texts featured in ANNUS MIRABILIS have not been published before, to my knowledge. Many others are rarely studied by Classics students -- including several examples from Neo-Latin authors -- making this both an ideal follow-on to the original book as wel as companion book for Latin students pursuing more traditional Latin courses.
Where else will you get to read Tobias Smollett and Laurence Sterne's Latin letters, alongside those of Cicero and Augustus!
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This book is much more than just a follow-up to the author's "Annus Horribilis". That was an introduction to the Latin which we find all around us, but this is much wider in scope, though it retains all the helpful notes and background information. It is also the same size and format as the previous book, with another funny cartoon cover.
Annus Mirabilis begins with curses and letters from Romans living in Britain, but moves quickly through the centuries to medieval hymns and then post-renaissance Latin prose and poetry -- as well as extracts fom More's Utopia and Galileo and Descartes among others, he even includes Latin extracts from the letters of Sterne and Smollett. Stuffed with all this rare neo-Latin, the book fills a big gap in traditional Latin courses which tend to concentrate solely on Latin as used by the Romans. (The Smollett letter is both hilarious and tragic, as he complains to a French quack doctor about his various illnesses! The Sterne letter is rather fruity, as you might expect from the author of Tristram Shandy.)
Along the way this book also includes letters from Cicero and Augustus, Heloise and Abelard and others, and even finds a new way of approaching the difficult subject of Latin poetry -- Walker introduces it first by looking at examples of medieval accentual verse (hymns etc) and then by scrutinising church epitaphs (everyday Latin, you see) for quantitative verses in the Classical manner and explaining the scansion for each. If you ever wanted to know what a Leonine rhyme is, this is the place to find out.
It doesn't really matter if you haven't read Annus Horribilis -- as Walker says in his introduction, he's designed this new book to be a companion to any more traditional Latin course as well as a sequel to his own book.
Annus Mirabilis begins with curses and letters from Romans living in Britain, but moves quickly through the centuries to medieval hymns and then post-renaissance Latin prose and poetry -- as well as extracts fom More's Utopia and Galileo and Descartes among others, he even includes Latin extracts from the letters of Sterne and Smollett. Stuffed with all this rare neo-Latin, the book fills a big gap in traditional Latin courses which tend to concentrate solely on Latin as used by the Romans. (The Smollett letter is both hilarious and tragic, as he complains to a French quack doctor about his various illnesses! The Sterne letter is rather fruity, as you might expect from the author of Tristram Shandy.)
Along the way this book also includes letters from Cicero and Augustus, Heloise and Abelard and others, and even finds a new way of approaching the difficult subject of Latin poetry -- Walker introduces it first by looking at examples of medieval accentual verse (hymns etc) and then by scrutinising church epitaphs (everyday Latin, you see) for quantitative verses in the Classical manner and explaining the scansion for each. If you ever wanted to know what a Leonine rhyme is, this is the place to find out.
It doesn't really matter if you haven't read Annus Horribilis -- as Walker says in his introduction, he's designed this new book to be a companion to any more traditional Latin course as well as a sequel to his own book.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Annus Mirabilis is a fantastic book for broadening your horizons when it comes to Latin. The book contains lots of different type of Latin texts from different eras. I particularly enjoyed the chapter on poetry. The author makes this very accessible and interesting. He gives very helpful notes making the texts reasonably easy to follow. I would highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in Latin!
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
1 review
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Annus Mirabilis: More Latin for Everyday Life
23 Jun 2010
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I thought this book would provide a list of latin translations of common phrases. Instead, it's a very in-depth, analytical analysis of Latin. Pretty dry stuff. It just didn't meet my needs or expectations. It is NOT "Latin for Everyday Life!"
Was this review helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
