Classics

Bi/Multilingualism and the History of Language Learning and Teaching

HoLLTnet international meeting:

‘Bi/Multilingualism and the History of Language Learning and Teaching’

University of Reading, United Kingdom, 6-7 July 2018

HoLLTnet (www.hollt.net) is a Research Network of AILA (L’Association Internationale de Linguistique Appliquée). The Research Network was founded in 2015 to stimulate research
into the history of language learning and teaching within applied linguistics internationally.
Building on several successful previous colloquia (www.hollt.net/events.html), this
international conference aims to situate the history of language learning and teaching in the
wider context of multilingualism across time and space. Possible topics for contributions
include, but are not limited to:

  • Bi/Multilingual dictionaries, grammars and other language-learning materials
  • Language learning and teaching in multilingual communities
  • Scholars of classical languages as learners of modern languages, and vice versa
  • Language learning and teaching in colonial contexts
  • The role of L1 in foreign language teaching
  • Polyglottism in the history of language learning
  • The role of translation and bilingual texts in language learning
  • Non-native speaker teachers in the history of language learning

All papers should be based on historical research.

If you would like to be considered for participation in the colloquium, please send your
presentation title, your name, email address, institutional affiliation, and a 250-word abstract
to r.mairs@reading.ac.uk by 23 February 2018. Those sending proposals will be notified of
the outcome as soon as possible after that date.

Further information on conference registration for those not presenting papers will be
circulated in due course.

The event has been made possible by the generous support of the Centre for Literacy and Multilingualism and Department of Classics at the University of Reading. The university campus has quick and convenient transport links to London and Heathrow and Gatwick Airports. More information on getting to campus. 

Dr Rachel Mairs, Associate Professor of Classical and Near Eastern Studies, University of
Reading

Dr Richard Smith, University of Warwick, and Professor Giovanni Iamartino, University of
Milan, Joint convenors, AILA Research Network on History of Language Learning and
Teaching

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Ure Annual Lecture: Classics and Classification

‘Classics and Classification’ – a seminar by Charlotte Roueche (KCL).

The Seventh Annual Percy Ure Lecture will take place on Friday 17th of November, 5pm, in the Henley Business School (G15).

Our distinguished speaker this year is Professor Charlotte Roueché of King’s College London, who will speak on the topic of ‘Classics and Classification’.

The Annual Ure lecture, established in 2011 on occasion of our department’s centenary celebrations, is one of the annual highlights in the life of our department, bringing together academics, students, alumni, and friends of Classics at Reading.

We would be delighted to welcome you on this occasion.

If you intend to come, please confirm this to me at p.kruschwitz@reading.ac.uk, so we can keep an eye on numbers: attendance is free and open to all, but space is limited.

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How diverse was Roman Britain?

By Dr Matthew Nicholls, Department of Classics, University of Reading

A heated conversation arose on social media on Wednesday surrounding the question of the racial diversity of Roman Britain, or the Roman empire more generally.

The tweet from Alt Right commentator Paul Jospeh Watson, that kicked off the debate

There is plenty of evidence that the Roman empire was relatively diverse, as might be expected from an empire that encouraged trade and mobility across a territory that extended from Hadrian’s Wall to north Africa, the Rhine, and the Euphrates (and which, less positively, enslaved and moved conquered populations around by force).

Rome itself was a melting pot of people from all over the Mediterranean and beyond (satirical poets moan about it, and we have the evidence of tombstones). Outside Italy the Roman army in particular acted as medium for change and movement in several ways.

Continue reading →

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Can we mend broken hearts?

Professor Peter Kruschwitz is Professor of Classics Mending broken heartsat Reading and a specialist in Latin Language and Literature.

The fence around the University of Reading’s Humanities and Social Science (HumSS) Building is currently decorated with images and captions illustrating Reading’s desire to be ‘asking big questions.’ One of the captions, attributed to Dr Sam Boateng from the School of Biological Sciences, asks: ‘Can we mend broken hearts?’

The caption, a playful curtsy to Reading’s leadership in cardiovascular research, reminded me of a passage attributed to the Latin poet Lygdamus, a love-poet of the first century B. C., who wrote in his Elegies 2.1-6:

Qui primus caram iuueni carumque puellae
eripuit iuuenem, ferreus ille fuit.
durus et ille fuit, qui tantum ferre dolorem,
uiuere et erepta coniuge qui potuit.
non ego firmus in hoc, non haec patientia nostro
ingenio: frangit fortia corda dolor.

‘He who first robbed a young man of his love, and a girl of her beloved, that person was made of iron. Hard, too, was he who could bear such pain, and who could live, with the partner snatched away. I am not strong in that respect, nor is there such endurance in my mind: pain makes brave hearts break.’

The image of heartbrokenness – ancient, yet familiar – begins to intrigue: how can a heart be broken, how can it get broken? Is it just the lack of resilience to emotional strain, one’s weakness, as Lygdamus suggests?

A possible answer can be found in even earlier Latin literature, in an author of the third and second centuries B. C. As far as one can tell from the fragmentary transmission of Latin literature, it may in fact have been the comic playwright Titus Maccius Plautus, who first employed it in his comedy Cistellaria (‘Casket Comedy’). In this play, Plautus has a lovesick young man called Alcesimarchus say (Cistellaria 221–2):

‘maritumis moribus mecum experitur: ita meum frangit amantem animum.’

‘He handles me the way the (stormy) sea would do: thus he breaks my lovesick heart.’

Plautus exploits the imagery of a ship exposed to the heavy sea, battered by the waves, lacking direction, and ultimately crushed to pieces by the forces of nature to describe the battles, external and internal, that Alcesimarchus has to face in his quest for fulfilled love.

From here it is only a small step to the image’s predominant use outside the realm of Latin poetry: here, animum frangere is frequently used particularly as an image denoting the ‘crushing of someone’s spirit’ (rather than heart itself – the Latin term covers both facets).

Yet, in Latin writing it does not always have to be debilitating trauma that may result in the proverbial ‘broken heart’. Quintilian, Rome’s first professor of Latin, when discussing the best way in which to design the epilogue to a courtroom speech, suggests in his Institutio Oratoria (11.3.170):

‘si misericordia commouendos, flexum uocis et flebilem suauitatem, qua praecipue franguntur animi quaeque est maxime naturalis: nam etiam orbos uiduasque uideas in ipsis funeribus canoro quodam modo proclamantis.’

‘If they (sc. the judges) are to be moved by pity, (sc. employ) an inflexion of the voice and a whiney sweetness, by which hearts are broken first and foremost, yet which is most natural: for you see parents bereft of their children, and you see widows, at the very funerals, lamenting in that peculiar song-like voice.’

Even this very small selection of Latin usages of the image of the broken heart does show: pain, worries, sorrow (and ultimately: death) are deeply connected to it – and the idea of suffering and even of death due to a broken heart (figuratively, not literally speaking) is not alien to the medical profession.

What is interesting to a linguistic scholar, of course, is how a verbal image that started its life as a poetic metaphor can be appropriated by the language of science – a language that often (albeit incorrectly) is deemed objective and descriptive.

The image of the broken heart that Dr Boateng uses in his big question is by no means an exception in that respect. Instead, it even adds another facet to it: the allusion to the image does not restore a literal facet of the phrase ‘broken heart’ that did not exist in its figurative use – hearts, unless subject to substantial physical force, do not literally break into pieces, like a clay vessel if dropped. Instead, it combines the pre-existing image with that of a broken piece of machinery (an engine, perhaps), thus expanding the metaphoric use rather than restricting it.

Dr Boateng asks a big question: ‘Can we mend broken hearts?’ – and I very much hope he can (or that he will be able to do that one day in the very near future). An even bigger question than this could be: ‘Should we mend broken hearts?’ One must not be cynical when it comes to deeply unsettling matters; yet, the answer to this question, whether for the scientific or the poetic use of the phrase, will have to remain a philosophical one.