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An Ovid Reader | |||
An Ovid Reader 2009 • 978-1-58510-149-8 • paper • 262 pages • 8.5 x 11 • $26.95 Designed for courses at the high school level, this text includes thematic and graded organization so the stories are arranged in ways to provide connections for students and teachers, as well as new and innovative activities to make the material come alive for the student. . | About the Authors | Table of Contents | Preface | Review | |||
Description Geared toward the advanced high school or intermediate college Latin student, An Ovid Reader covers a selection of works by the great Roman poet Ovid. Passages from Amores and Metamorphoses are arranged in ways that connect for the reader, and innovative discussion questions prompt thoughtful insights into the tales.
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Ed DeHoratius teaches classics at Wayland High School.
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Table of Contents Acknowledgements vii Preface 1 Introduction to Ovid 9 Introduction to the Amores 15 Introduction to the Metamorphoses 17 Chapter One: Amor Vincit Omnia 21 Chapter Two: Benevolentia Deorum 63 Chapter Three: Amoris Difficilia 107 Chapter Four: Ars Latet Arte Sua 167 Appendix One: Vocabulary Frequency 215 Appendix Two: Rhetorical Figures 219 Appendix Three: Metrics and Scansion 227 Glossary
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The use of this book is relatively simple. It requires you to know some Latin (not all) and, most important, it requires you to think. All that stands between you and a solid understanding of Latin is a few extra minutes of patience and reflection. When I tell my students this, they laugh or roll their eyes. But these same students can recite endings and the meanings of vocabulary. Yet they still lack the confidence, despite demonstrated knowledge, to read Latin successfully. It is my hope that this book will help bridge that gap between knowledge and understanding. The difficulties you face reading Latin are many: multiple definitions of words with different meanings understanding words with a wide range of meanings in a specific context grammatical rules that don’t seem to apply as neatly or consistently as you were taught they would putting aside your natural inclination to think in English when it counters what you know (but may initially forget) about the Latin The best way to address these difficulties is to spend time with the Latin in an active, constructive, and meaningful way. It is essential that you deal with the Latin as it is written and as it is intended to be read. Make certain to read the notes carefully when you no longer understand the flow of the Latin; if your confidence in reading is lower, read the notes for a sentence before going to the Latin to alert you to troublespots in the sentence. The notes in general will not give you explicit answers; particularly difficult phrases or constructions will indeed be translated. But the assumption of this book is that you have a solid foundation in forms and grammatical constructions; that it is not necessarily Latin itself but rather the particular Latin of, in the case of this book, Ovid that will cause difficulty. The book will supply, it is hoped, the context and clues you need to understand the specific Latin of Ovid. The following summaries will introduce you to specific aspects of the book. . The book contains six poems from Ovid’s Amores and five stories from Ovid’s epic poem, The Metamorphoses, the former written in elegiac couplets, the latter in dactylic hexameter. These eleven selections represent the entirety of the Advanced Placement Latin Literature Ovid syllabus. They are grouped into four themes: Amor Vincit Omnia, Benevolentia Deorum, Difficilia Amoris, and Ars Latet Arte Sua. Each chapter contains anywhere between two and four selections. Each chapter begins with an introduction to the theme, followed by unannotated clean or display copies of the Latin of the texts. Following these clean texts are annotated texts with vocabulary, grammar, and other aids. The annotated versions of each text are preceded by a short introduction to the themes and context of that particular text. In addition to the four chapters are a general Introduction, which includes an introduction to Ovid and his life, a timeline of important dates, and a glossary of his works and of important people; an appendix, which includes a vocabulary frequency list for all of the texts, a summary of rhetorical figures included on the AP syllabus, and a summary of terminology and rules for scansion; and a glossary, which includes all words in the text with all not-obvious long syllables marked long. Clean Copy of Text . At the beginning of each chapter (after the introduction to the theme) is an unbroken, unannotated copy of each text. It is imperative that these texts remain unmarked; when you are reading at home, make any notes you need on the annotated text. The clean texts should be left in reserve for studying for your classroom tests (and the AP exam if you are preparing for it). Studying from an annotated text makes it difficult to interact with unannotated Latin; you become accustomed to having notes nearby when you read, and so, when faced with the unannotated Latin of a test, you find the lack of those notes detrimental to your understanding of the Latin.General Layout of the Page . Starting from the upper left and moving clockwise around the page: notes, text, prose summary, vocabulary, visual, sentence structure diagram, discussion questions. Few pages will contain all of these, and the last three (visual, sentence structure diagram, and discussion questions) can shuffle their position on the page depending on the specific page layout.Notes . The notes have been written to assist you with difficult aspects of a given passage. This assistance will take two primary forms: one, leading questions, which are designed to prompt you to think about Latin issues relevant to a particular passage; two, notes of negation, which predict how you might incorrectly interpret the Latin and negate that incorrect assumption to elicit the correct response. These notes promote the flexibility and skills that are essential to becoming better readers of Latin.Prose Summary . A Latin prose summary (taken from an 1821 edition of Ovid) is included as a potentially easier version of Ovid’s Latin. Often, the prose summary uses easier vocabulary and sentence structure, and should prove a useful reference when Ovid’s Latin becomes confusing. The prose summary is intended to be read without any aids. While some spellings have been updated to make them more recognizable to the student of classical Latin, and punctuation has been modernized, the text appears largely as it did in its original printing.Vocabulary . There are two types of vocabulary in the book: running vocabulary below the text of a given page, and a glossary at the back of the book. The running vocabulary is a selective vocabulary, i.e. not every word will be defined there. The glossary does contain every word that appears in the book. In addition, the glossary contains macrons for every word for assistance with scansion, includes brief grammatical explanations for certain words, and brief explanatory notes for proper nouns or other words that might require further description than the definition alone provides.Visuals . Visuals should not be considered extra or superfluous. They are included to illustrate specific aspects of the text. Often, visuals will include labels or diagrams that correspond directly to Ovid’s text. When they do not, they encompass too much of the Latin to be labeled concisely. If the Latin does not make sense, use the visual as an aid to provide context and to better understand the narrative.Sentence Structure Diagrams . Sentence structure diagrams do not follow a fixed visual pattern. Each diagram uses a system unique to the sentence it illustrates. Nonetheless, all diagrams render a non-linear sentence into some sort of linear format. The diagrams should be read top to bottom and/or left to right, depending on the specific format. Some explanation of each diagram will be included with it.Discussion Questions . The discussion questions are designed to be used when reading and not necessarily as an activity separate from or in addition to in-class or nightly reading assignments. Discussion questions should be used as preparation for reading the text; the questions will point out broader themes and more specific points of interpretation for the text. Even if you do not answer the questions explicitly, you should keep them in mind when reading. It is from these questions that preparation for any essay portions of tests administered by your teacher (and for the essay portion of the AP exam if you are preparing for it) should come.
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[A]n intelligent and refreshingly thorough approach toward teaching high-schoolers the intricacies of the Catullus/Ovid curriculum. Wickedly precise and detailed, the text has anticipated a variety of issues young minds have in accessing Latin literature. In short, the text has been meticulously prepared and designed exclusively, it appears, to counter traditionally unmet challenges students have with understanding aspects of the Catullus/Ovid syllabus. -Norman M. Achin, Latin Teacher,
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