Colloquial and Literary Latin

What is colloquial Latin? What can we learn about it from Roman literature, and how does an understanding of colloquial Latin enhance our appreciation of literature? This book sets out to answer such questions, beginning with examinations of how the term 'colloquial' has been used by linguists and by classicists (and how its Latin equivalents were used by the Romans) and continuing with exciting new research on colloquial language in a wide range of Latin authors. Each chapter is written by a leading expert in the relevant area, and the material presented includes new editions of several texts. The Introduction presents the first account in English of developments in the study of colloquial Latin over the last century, and throughout the book findings are presented in clear, lucid, and jargon-free language, making a major scholarly debate accessible to a broad range of students and non-specialists.

Preface David Langslow; 1. Introduction Eleanor Dickey; 2. Colloquial language in linguistic studies James Clackson; 3. Roman authors on colloquial language Rolando Ferri and Philomen Probert; 4. Idiom(s) and literariness in classical literary criticism Anna Chahoud; 5. Preliminary conclusions Eleanor Dickey; 6. Possessive pronouns in Plautus Wolfgang David Cirilo de Melo; 7. Greeting and farewell expressions as evidence for colloquial language: between literary and epigraphical texts Paolo Poccetti; 8. Colloquial and literary language in early Roman tragedy Hilla Halla-aho and Peter Kruschwitz; 9. The fragments of Cato's Origines John Briscoe; 10. Hyperbaton and register in Cicero J. G. F. Powell; 11. Notes on the language of Marcus Caelius Rufus Harm Pinkster; 12. Syntactic colloquialism in Lucretius Tobias Reinhardt; 13. Campaigning for utilitas: style, grammar and philosophy in C. Iulius Caesar Andreas Willi; 14. The style of the Bellum Hispaniense and the evolution of Roman historiography Jan Felix Gaertner; 15. Grist to the mill: the literary uses of the quotidian in Horace, Satire 1.5 Richard F. Thomas; 16. Sermones deorum: divine discourse in Virgil's Aeneid Stephen Harrison; 17. Petronius' linguistic resources Martti Leiwo; 18. Parenthetical remarks in the Silvae Kathleen Coleman; 19. Colloquial Latin in Martial's Epigrams Nigel Kay; 20. Current and ancient colloquial in Gellius Leofranc Holford-Strevens; 21. Forerunners of Romance -mente adverbs in Latin prose and poetry Brigitte Bauer; 22. Late sparsa collegimus: the influence of sources on the language of Jordanes Giovanbattista Galdi; 23. The tale of Frodebert's Tail Danuta Shanzer; 24. Colloquial Latin in the insular Latin scholastic colloquia? Michael Lapidge; 25. Conversations in Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica Michael Winterbottom.

How did the Latin of casual conversation differ from that of formal writing? How much colloquial Latin appears in surviving literature, and how can we tell? Twenty-six of the world's leading Latin scholars discuss these and other questions, making a major scholarly debate accessible in English for the first time.

Eleanor Dickey is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Exeter. She is the author of numerous books and articles on the Greek and Latin languages and linguistics, including Ancient Greek Scholarship: A Guide to Finding, Reading, and Understanding Scholia, Commentaries, Lexica, and Grammatical Treatises, from their Beginnings to the Byzantine Period (2007); Latin Forms of Address: From Plautus to Apuleius (2002) and Greek Forms of Address: From Herodotus to Lucian (1996).
Anna Chahoud is Professor of Latin at Trinity College Dublin. She is a member of the editorial board of The Bryn Mawr Classical Review, and the author of Lucilii Reliquiarum Concordantiae (1998).