Upper School Curriculum

Grades: 9, 10, 11, 12
Spring

PREREQ: Students are offered placement into WL ADV courses by their current teacher, in consultation with the department. Performance in previous courses, end-of-year assessments, overall language proficiency, and student skills are factors in offering placement to students.

Latin literature has a long and complex history beyond the height of the Roman Empire. In this course, students explore the history of Latin literature beyond the classical period, learning both how the language developed and changed over time, and the ways in which the Latin language was adapted to new contexts. Students will examine new genres that grew out of the cultural context of late antiquity, the medieval period, and beyond. These texts, not often taught at the high school level, may include early Christian hagiographies, medieval religious and scientific treatises, and early modern philosophy. Since this course presupposes a high level of proficiency in Latin, students will do deep textual analysis of a variety of texts, paying particular attention to the ways in which Latin literature and documents are transmitted through the manuscript record and the ways that modern editors restore these texts. At the end of the course, students will produce a polished, critical edition of a short excerpt of text by examining and transcribing sections from manuscripts, collating the text, and making editorial decisions about how to restore texts.