With an unusually broad scope encompassing how Europeans taught and learned reading and writing at all levels, Classroom Commentaries: Teaching the Poetria Nova across Medieval and Renaissance Europe provides a synoptic picture of medieval and early modern instruction in rhetoric, poetics, and composition theory and practice. As Marjorie Curry Woods convincingly argues, the decision of Geoffrey of Vinsauf (fl. 1200) to write his rhetorical treatise in verse resulted in a unique combination of rhetorical doctrine, poetic examples, and creative exercises that proved malleable enough to inspire teachers for three centuries. Based on decades of research, this book excerpts, translates, and analyzes teachers' notes and commentaries in the more than two hundred extant manuscripts of the text. We learn the reasons for the popularity of the Poetria nova among medieval and early Renaissance teachers, how prose as well as verse genres were taught, why the Poetria nova was a required text in central European universities, its attractions for early modern scholars and historians, and how we might still learn from it today. Woods' monumental achievement will allow modern scholars to see the Poetria nova as earlier Europeans did: a witty and perennially popular text central to the experience of almost every student.

This rich collection of essays by an international group of authors explores a wide range of commentaries on ancient Latin and Greek texts. It pays particular attention to individual commentaries, national traditions of commentary, the part played by commentaries in the reception of classical texts, and the role of printing and publishing.

Offers a better way to read Thucydides through the explanation of grammar and a glimpse into the history of classical scholarship

This casebook is part of a nationwide effort to capture and use practitioner knowledge to better prepare teachers for the reality of today's classrooms, given a student population vastly different from that of even a decade ago. Consciously designed to provoke engaging and demanding discussion, the cases presented here are candid, dramatic, highly readable accounts of teaching events or series of events. Set in three of the nation's most diverse cities -- San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix -- the cases offer problem-based snapshots of on-the-job dilemmas. The teacher-authors discuss topics that generate heated interchange and run the risk of polarizing opinions and creating defensive assumptions, particularly those dealing with bias, race, and class. These issues, plus cultural behaviors and socioeconomic circumstances have important implications for classroom practices. By examining such issues, the editors hope that educators will see -- and act on -- the need for a greater variety of teaching styles, distribution of opportunities, and educational access for all students.

This is a substantially introduced and annotated first edition of a previously unknown Latin text, which throws light on the intellectual history of early medieval Europe.

This is the first book-length analysis of the techniques and procedures of ancient mathematical commentaries. It focuses on examples in Chinese, Sanskrit, Akkadian and Sumerian, and Ancient Greek, presenting the general issues by constant detailed reference to these commentaries, of which substantial extracts are included in the original languages and in translation, sometimes for the first time. This makes the issues accessible to readers without specialized training in mathematics or in the languages involved. The result is a much richer understanding than was hitherto possible of the crucial role of commentaries in the history of mathematics in four different linguistic areas, of the nature of mathematical commentaries in general, of the contribution that the study of mathematical commentaries can make to the history of science and to the study of commentaries in general, and of the ways in which mathematical commentaries are like and unlike other kinds of commentaries.

Patrick Paul Hogan's A Student Commentary on Pausanias, Book 1, introduces the first book of Pausanias' "Description of Greece" to students of Classical Greek. Pausanias' second century CE work is the only surviving ancient description of the monuments and artwork of mainland Greece. Book 1 of the "Description" covers Athens, its demes, and Megara--that is, Attica, the heart of the ancient Greek world. It offers not only a walking description of buildings, statues, and artwork by an ancient traveler but also insight into the mindset of an educated Greek of the Roman imperial age: his reaction to Roman domination and Classical Greek history and culture, his deeply felt religious beliefs, and his ideas regarding Hellenism and Hellenic identity. This textbook, the first on Pausanias aimed at students in almost a century, brings Pausanias back into the classroom for a new generation of readers. It is based on the Greek text edited by Rocha-Pereira and includes philological and historical commentary by Patrick Paul Hogan. A Student Commentary on Pausanias, Book 1aims at elucidating difficult syntax and helping the reader with the immense number of names and places Pausanias mentions. This volume is suitable for students of Classical Greek at the graduate and undergraduate levels, whether Classical philologists or Classical archaeologists and art historians. Professors of archaeology will find this textbook an excellent starting point for any course on Pausanias and easily supplemented by their own knowledge of material remains and modern finds.