Waquet’s wonderful, readable book (in Howe’s fine translation) provides an intellectual history of the Latin language ... Waquet memorably charts Latin’s reception in scholarly, comic, tender, and exhaustive detail through learned literary, and popular sources.”—Choice History Spectator Independent New Criterion Daily Telegraph Washington Times London Review of Books Latin: or the Empire of the Sign .”—A. C. Grayling, Guardian, Summer Choice 2002 Los Angeles Times Book Review Telegraph Books of the Year 2001
... a lucid, learned retelling of the fortunes of the Latin language from the 16th century to its rapid decline in the 1960s.
Telegraph Books of the Year 2001
...detailed and wide-ranging...
Los Angeles Times Book Review
...a splendid book: original in method, suggestive in argument, and a pleasure to read.
...the book is valuable if for no other reason than for the historical light it sheds on contemporary debates over the value of 'traditional' education – and for reminding us that a classical education is sometimes more about class than about education.
Latin is dead and this book is its epitaph. A fulsome, plangent, finely engraved epitaph but an epitaph all the same ... it is the merit and interest of Waquet's survey that she finds Latin not only deployed for the liturgy, but also to describe things carnal, pornographic or otherwise shameful.
...richly researched and delightful ... with scholars of Waquet's generosity and ability, the old language might yet have a future.
It is a wonderful survey of the uses to which we have put Latin.
... [a] fascinating and lively survey of the place of Latin in western culture during the past 400 years.
... an eloquent obituary ...
... an erudite, fascinating cultural history of the Latin language in the modern era. A scholarly work, this will nonetheless appeal to general readers as well.
Waquet's wonderful, readable book (in Howe's fine translation) provides an intellectual history of the Latin language ... Waquet memorably charts Latin's reception in scholarly, comic, tender, and exhaustive detail through learned literary, and popular sources.
Though the once burning question of Latin's place in school curricula has been overshadowed by other issues, Waquet (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris) feels the need for a resolutely historical account of the language that is not a pamphlet or an exercise in special pleading. She writes a social history of Latin in the modern era, analyzing the uses made of it and the discourses concerning it. The 1998 , published by Editions Albin Michel, is translated by John Howe. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
