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CLU13443/CLU24443 Latin Letters

To write a letter - whether a formal, public composition or a private letter to a friend - is to create an image, consciously or unconsciously, of oneself as writer and of one's relationship with the letter's recipient. This was just as true for Roman letter-writers as it is for us today. This module will focus on two very different sets of letters, a fictional verse text (the Heroides of Ovid) and the 'real' prose letters of Pliny the younger.
  • Module Organiser:
    • Prof Monica Gale
  • Duration:
    • One term (Sep - Dec)
  • Contact Hours:
    • 22 classes
  • Weighting:
    • CLU13443: 5 ECTS; CLU24443: 10 ECTS
  • Assessment:
    • CLU13443: 20% continuous assessment (one written assignment), 80% final examination; CLU24443: 40% continuous assessment (two written assignments), 60% final examination

Learning Outcomes

Upon the successful completion of this module students should be able to:

  • Translate and analyse the prescribed texts
  • Apply enhanced linguistic and analytical skills and consolidated grammatical knowledge through translation and close reading of substantial verse and prose texts
  • Comment critically on select passages from the prescribed texts, both orally and in writing
  • Evaluate recent critical approaches to epistolarity in general, and to the prescribed text

Prescribed Texts

  • Ovid: Heroides 1, 2, 7 and 10, in P.E. Knox (ed.), Ovid: Heroides (Cambridge, 1995)
  • Pliny: Letters, in A.N. Sherwin-White (ed.), Fifty Letters of Pliny (2nd edn, Oxford, 1969) [selections]

Introductory Reading

  • M. Trapp, 'Introduction', in Greek and Latin Letters: An Anthology with Translation (Cambridge, 2003), 1-47
  • H. Jacobson, Ovid's Heroides (Princeton, 1974)
  • R.K. Gibson and R. Morello, Reading the Letters of Pliny the Younger: An Introduction (Cambridge, 2012), esp. chs. 3-6