Medieval Institute Publications at Western Michigan University publishes the Secular Commentary series for the TEAMS Consortium for Teaching Medieval Studies. The Secular Commentary Series provides modern English translations of medieval texts that analyze, annotate and explicate classical and vernacular works. Dating from the fourth through the sixteenth century, these texts represent various traditions (grammatical, allegorical, exegetical, academic and humanistic). The works they elucidate include poetry, fiction, history, philosophy and scientific treatises. Each volume of the series contains a critical introduction and select bibliography, a clear prose translation and notes designed to gloss difficult passages. The aim of the series is to support teaching in the broadest sense: the volumes are suitable for the classroom and serve as an aid for scholars and generalist readers across the full range of the humanities.
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John of Garland, "Integumenta Ovidii": Text, Translation and Commentary
Kyle Gervais
The renowned scholar-poet John of Garland wrote the Integumenta Ovidii (“Allegories on Ovid”) in early thirteenth-century Paris at a time of renewed interest in Classical Latin literature. In this short poem, John offers a series of dense, highly allusive allegories on various Greek and Roman myths in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. This important but difficult work has fascinated and challenged generations of modern students and scholars. The text is here edited and translated for the first time in 90 years, drawing on the evidence of over two dozen manuscripts. Comprehensive explanatory notes help readers to understand John’s condensed allegories in their medieval context. Textual notes discuss the various difficulties in the transmitted text of the poem, and offer several improvements on the texts of the older editions.
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Brunetto Latini, "La rettorica"
Stefani D'Agata D'Ottavi
Brunetto Latini's La rettorica is the first Italian translation of Cicero's early and widely influential De inventione, and this volume is a translation of Latini's translation, including both Cicero's work and Brunetto's commentary.
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The Vulgate Commentary on Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book 1
Frank T. Coulson
Composed around 1250 by an unknown author in the region of Orléans, the Vulgate Commentary on Ovid's Metamorphoses is the most widely disseminated and reproduced medieval work on Ovid's epic compendium of classical mythology and materialist philosophy. This commentary both preserves the rich store of twelfth-century glossing on the Metamorphoses and incorporates new material of literary interest, while the marginal glosses in many respects reflect the scholar interests of an early thirteenth-century schoolmaster. The Vulgate Commentary is always transmitted as a series of interlinear and marginal glosses surrounding the text manuscript, whereas other earlier commentaries were independent of a full text of the poem. The Vulgate Commentary exercised a wide-ranging influence on the understanding and presentation of Ovid's Metamorphoses in the High Middle Ages and Renaissance, and the commentary exists in both French and Italian manuscripts.
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Accessus ad auctores: Medieval Introductions to the Authors (Codex latinus monacensis 19475)
Stephen M. Wheeler
Medieval commentaries typically included an accessus, a standardized introduction to an author or book. In the twelfth century these introductions were anthologised, referred to now as Accessus ad auctores. They served as the first handbooks of literary criticism. The earliest and most comprehensive example, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 19475, saec. XII, is presented here for the first time in a faithful critical edition, with a new translation and explanatory notes addressing different aspects of the text. This book's aim is to present an accurate version of the text while respecting the arrangement and integrity of the anthology as a whole, and includes previously unpublished material from the anthology.