Latin Composition
A draft of your composition work (A and B) is due by Friday
midnight. It will be returned to your with comments, corrections, hints
and suggestions on Saturday. The final draft is due by Monday
midnight. Note: This first draft is required: if you
do not turn in a draft of the composition by Friday midnight, you will receive
no composition credit for the week.
** If you are not an OU student, I will try to mark your
compositions as well; send it to laura-gibbs@ou.edu
and make sure you put MEDIEVAL LATIN in the subject line **
A. Answer the questions - in Latin...! Please make sure that your email
contains both the question and the answer. If you are having trouble
with this exercise, check out these Hints
for Answering Questions in Latin.
B. Write a small Latin composition on your own. You will choose
either to describe a picture or
to write a small monologue/dialogue. If you are having trouble with this exercise,
check out these Hints for Free
Composition in Latin.
- When describing a picture, do not say "in
the picture" or "the picture shows"... instead, imagine you
are looking at the actual scene itself, and describe the scene ("the
sheep are sleeping", "the fox is dead", "the woman is
very beautiful"). Examples.
- When writing a dialogue, do not use indirect speech
("Samson says... Delilah says..."), but just write out what the
characters say - don't worry, I should be able to figure out who's talking!
Examples.
- Quare Jovinianus vestimenta deposuit et aquam intravit?
- Quam ob rem a militibus angelus sicut imperator receptus
est?
- Ad quem perrexit Iovinianus nudus ut vestimenta et equum
acquiret?
- Cum Jovinianus introductus fuisset, quid canis fecit?
- Et quid falco fecit?
- De quo Jovinianus confessus est?
- Quis Joviniano vestimenta dedit?
- Propter quod Deus Jovinianum flagellavit?
- Quid angelus custodiebat?
- Quare Jovinianus gratias Deo reddidit?
B. Latin composition
Dialogue/Monologue: Choose one of the following scenes and
write the words you can imagine the characters saying. You should write 5
sentences that are each at least four words long each. Please
please do not use an English-Latin dictionary. You should have plenty
of vocabulary from this week's reading to write your description!
- Quid dicunt canis et falco? If the canis and the falco
could speak (and if they could speak Latin!), what would they say when Jovinianus
- the real Jovinianus - walks into the room? The story tells us what the canis
and the falco do, and you can tell us what it is that they would
say about it.
- De signis. The imperatrix thinks that she should be able
to recognize her husband by the signa privata that they share, which nobody
else knows about. (If you have read Homer's Odyssey you know that
Odysseus and Penelope test each other in this way.) Jovinianus tells these
certa signa to the ianitor, and the ianitor then reports them to the imperatrix.
Write a dialogue, either the dialogue between Jovinianus and the ianitor,
when he tells the ianitor what the signs are - or write the dialogue between
the ianitor and the imperatrix, when he reports to her the things that Jovinianus
told him.
- Imperator vero deo gratias reddidit. Write out in Latin
what kind of prayer you think Jovinianus would offer up to God in thanks (you
might look at the prayer
of Francis, just to see how the language of prayer works in Latin).
Modern Languages 4970 / MRS 4903: Medieval Latin. Spring
2003 Online Course at the University of Oklahoma. Visit http://www.ou.edu/online/
for more info.
Laura Gibbs, University of Oklahoma - Information Technology © 2003.
laura-gibbs@ou.edu. Last updated:
December 29, 2002 7:12 PM