Professor Robert Rabel Chair, Department of Classics University of Kentucky Dear Professor Rabel,
I am writing to express my enthusiastic support for the new Institute for Latin Studies, and my admiration of your department for its decision to inaugurate this program.
My own background as a scholar and teacher is in the field of early modern French literature. A few years ago, however, I began to focus in my research on Renaissance and post-Renaissance works in Latin. I have been astounded as a reader by the richness, diversity, and quality of that body of literature - a literature as significant as that of any of the national traditions during the same period - and attracted as a scholar by the enormous opportunities for editing, translating, and research of all sorts offered by a field that until recently has been almost entirely neglected.
This neglect, I believe, is the direct result of the attitudes and ideologies underlying the establishment of modern literature departments in the European and American universities of the late nineteenth century. The study of literature was segmented, and the basis for this segmentation was the modern nation-state. Alongside the major national literatures - German, Italian, French, English, Spanish - a place was retained for the study of classical antiquity, idealized in ways linked to the various nationalisms. This left the entire body of post-classical writing in Latin - a tradition seventeen centuries old, the backbone and unifying element of European thought - with no home in the university.
Medieval Latin literature and, more recently, humanist and post-humanist writing in Latin have begun to attract among scholars the attention they deserve. But the structure of academic departments - except at the University of Kentucky - has not changed. This means that the study of post-classical writers who used Latin tends to be divided among a variety of specialized fields. Certain of these writers are classified as the province of religion or philosophy departments; others are assigned, on the basis of their place of birth or residence, to various national literary traditions. But Erasmus did not write as a Dutchman, nor Bacon (in his "Novum Organum") as an Englishman -- any more than Seneca and Isidore wrote as Spaniards or Augustine as an African. These writers viewed themsleves as citizens of a "res publica litterarum" transcending national and historical frontiers, unified by a common idiom, Latin, infinitely adaptable, fundamentally unchanging.
The disadvantages of the current organization of academic studies, with respect to the post-classical Latin tradition, are apparent. The treatment of the field is fragmented; writers and works not easily pigeon-holed are ignored; and scholars most often approach Latin literature as a secondary field, with the result that they lack a sense of the full scope of the Latin tradition - a sense essential for the appreciation of individual writers - and, since they often begin the study of the Latin language itself late, and have little leisure to pursue that study systematically, are sometimes insufficiently equipped to interpret the texts themselves. This has led in some cases to the publication of inaccurate translations and editions, and of scholarly works not grounded in an acquaintance with the original texts.
The Kentucky classics faculty, in establishing the Institute of Latin Studies, has found what I believe is an ideal solution to these difficulties, one that may well become a model for other universities. Graduate students, as I understand it, will be able to choose either a traditional classics program, in which they study in depth the Greek and Roman culture of antiquity, or a program defined by Latin expression, rather than by chronological boundaries. I have little doubt that the new program, through its emphasis on the Latin language, through the scope, quantity, and intrinsic interest of the texts to be read, and through the use of Latin as the language of instruction -- all features that have proven effective in the study of modern languages and literatures -- will produce graduates whose thorough knowledge of Latin and sophistication as readers will be remarkable, and who, as teachers and scholars in various fields, will by their skills draw attention to Kentucky's classics program.
Further, because in many universities, especially in Europe, there are immense obstacles to the sort of innovation Kentucky has undertaken, I would not be surprised to see the program draw an international group of students - and become eventually the cradle of a sort of renaissance of that humanist idea, the supranational "res publica litterarum," unified by Latin and the common heritage of antiquity, that will itself be an essential subject of the curriculum.
Finally, nothing could more auspicious than the choice of faculty for the program in its first year. Terence Tunberg and Milena Minkova, through their impeccable knowledge of Latin and of the entire Latin literary tradition, and through the passionate committment they bring to both teaching and scholarship, are both extraordinarly well equipped to make the new program a success.
In summary, I congratulate the University of Kentucky and particularly the classics department on the combination of judgment, vision, and boldness it has shown in creating the Institute for Latin Studies, and I look forward to following its progress in the coming years.
Sincerely, David Morgan Associate Professor Department of Modern Languages and Literatures Furman University Greenville, SC 29613
Created on ... March 26, 2001