Two nights a week you will be assigned a section of the Satyricon to translate in our next class meeting. These assignments vary in length according to the level at which you have registered for the course.The best way to prepare a text consists in maintaining a notebook in which you keep sequential vocabulary and grammar notes on the text. DO NOT write out translations of your assignments. DO NOT write notes in your Latin text. Entries you make for vocabulary should include the dictionary form of the word; a parse of the word; a translation. Every time you look up a word, make a dot next to it in the dictionary you use. Whenever you discover three dots next to a word in your dictionary, make an index card with the word on one side and the translation on the other. Drill your vocabulary cards every day. Entries you make for grammar points should explain the syntax of a particular word or phrase and cite the section of Allen and Greenough that explains the point. Note, the text we are using provides vocabulary and grammar notes. These are handy, but not sufficient. Petronian vocabulary is extraordinarily rich and desrves to be pursued. You should look up words in the Oxford Latin Dictionary to get complete entries on important words. Important words tend to be the ones you find most puzzling.
Break the text you are reading down into sentences. Look up and take notes on the vocabulary and grammar points you need to know to translate the sentence. When you have finished taking notes on the sentence, translate it aloud in English [if you're English translation doesn't make sense in English, you don't understand the Latin. Go back and look up more words and grammar points]. Look at each verb and each subordinate clause in the sentence and 1) parse it; 2) explain its syntax. Repeat the process for the next sentence. Then retranslate both sentences. Repeat the process for the next sentence. Then retranslate all three sentences. Continue until you have finished the assignment. Then retranslate the whole assignment.
I strongly encourage, I urge - dare I say it - I exhort you to study together. You will find that the work will go more quickly and classes will positively sing if you share resources when preparing for class. I will assume you have used the method of preparation I've described (or a more effective one). If you are translating in a poor or sloppy fashion in class, I will assume you have failed to adequately prepare for class and your participation grade will suffer greatly.
If you diligently pursue this method of preparation and you are not translating well in class, you need to see me so we can devise an method that works for you. If for reasons you know I don't want to know about, on rare occasions, you are not prepared for class, tell me. I would rather have you come to class unprepared than not come to class. On these rare occasions, I may torture you a bit with a sentence of sight reading, but by and large I will cut you slack. I would rather have you come to class unprepared than not come to class.
Each week, for seminar sessions, you will read sections of several books on the Satyricon (Slater and Conte) and sections of Bakhtin's book Rabelais and his World. Slater and Conte are two excellent modern classicists who apply different theoretical approaches to the Satyricon. Bakhtin was a Russian literary theorist who developed a number of analytical approaches to literature which we will explore in attempting to understand the Satyricon. Happily, the prose of each of these works is quite accessible, so I will not listen to complaints about the length of reading assignments (which I've struggled to keep to the 100 - 125 page a week range).For each seminar session, I have provide discussion questions which you should review as you prepare for the seminar. These questions are framed in terms of the specific assignments for that week. As a general matter, you should ask yourself the following questions when reading secondary scholarship:
- What is the author's argument. Each scholar's analytical model rests on a series of premises which lead to his/her conclusion - i.e., his interpretation of the text. Can you identify the premises and conclusions of the argument of each chapter we read? If not, does this reflect your poor preparation or the scholar's sloppy thinking [that is a rhetorical question - we will not be reading sloppy scholars].
- Literary scholars argue by testing their premises against the evidence of the text. You must evaluate these tests for yourselves. As great as Slater and Conte are, they are not perfect and the text they and we are studying, the Satyricon, is notoriously difficult to interpret. Just because Slater rejects the argument that the Satyricon was a parody of the Odyssey does not mean you should. You should, however, be able to identify the critical premises of each scholar's argument and explain why you think his testing of the textual evidence succeeds, fails or only partially convinces.
- In the case of Bakhtin, your assignment is more complicated. Bakhtin developed his theories by reading a literary text we will not read [although if you choose to read Rabelais' Gargantua, please do so]. Your evaluation of Bakhtin's arguments, accordingly, will be more difficult. However, you can and must identify the analytical tools and concepts Bakhtin deploys (e.g., the notion of the carnival) and determine whether they can be applied to the Satyricon (and if not, why not) and can deepen our understanding of what Petronius accomplished in his work.
- Despite the felicity of the prose of the scholars we will read, it is inevitable that you (and I) will come across concepts, language and allusions that will be difficult for us to understand. Note these difficulties and raise them in class. That is the very purpose of a seminar. I am far more likely to assume you haven't done the reading if you don't raise questions about difficulties in the scholarly literature than if you do.
Each week we will review two chapters of Moreland & Fleischer. You do not need to memorize the vocabulary in these chapters. You do need to translate assigned sentences and bring them to class. I will assign vocabulary from the Satyricon that you must prepare for each grammar review session.