Overview

This is the first edition of a Latin text unlike any other surviving one : at first sight an extensive, jumbled list of words with explanations, on closer inspection a window on the teaching of Latin shorthand in North Africa c. AD 400, when we find notarii, those trained in shorthand, prominently employed everywhere in state and church. The text reveals in detail how that training could relate to literary Latin and the classical Roman past. The single manuscript of it in our possession descends from a copy that must have been in Anglo-Saxon England by AD 700, and we can see how it was used for the earliest Latin glossary from that context. The edition seeks to make this story accessible both in general and in detail, with copious indices for those who may wish to consult it from various viewpoints: classical and later Latin, linguistic and historical.

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9781316514795

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'[Dionisotti's] superb exploration of EN reveals the history of a text and a mode of thinking about language that provide significant contexts for our reading of more familiar and more appealing works; so too, her scholarship has a depth, honesty, and generosity that deserve our attention and respect.' James E. G. Zetzel, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Author Information

A. C. Dionisotti was until retirement a Lecturer in the Department of Classics at King's College London. She has long been interested in texts that enabled the continuity of Latin (and sometimes Greek) in Western Europe to beyond the period of Roman rule. The Expositio Notarum is such a text, revealing a different aspect of ancient education, with unexpected influence on the glossaries transmitting Latin in the early medieval, and especially the Anglo-Saxon, world.

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