Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Editorial note regarding citations from manuscripts and publications
- A note on chronological terminology
- Introduction
- 1 Italian Renaissance education: an historiographical perspective
- 2 The elementary school curriculum in medieval and Renaissance Italy: traditional methods and developing texts
- 3 The secondary grammar curriculum
- 4 Latin authors in medieval and Renaissance Italian schools: the story of a canon
- 5 Reading Latin authors in medieval and Renaissance Italian schools
- 6 Rhetoric and style in the school grammar syllabus
- Conclusion
- Appendix I BL Harley 2653: the earliest known manuscript of Ianua
- APPENDIX II A handlist of manuscripts of Ianua
- Appendix III Manuscripts of Tebaldo's Regule
- Appendix IV Handlist of manuscripts of school authors produced in Italy and now found in Florentine libraries
- Appendix V Theoretical grammar manuscripts in Florentine libraries examined and included or eliminated as italian school grammars
- Appendix VI Authorities Cited Explicitly in Manuscripts of Major School Authors in Florentine Libraries
- Bibliography
- Index of manuscripts
- General index
3 - The secondary grammar curriculum
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Editorial note regarding citations from manuscripts and publications
- A note on chronological terminology
- Introduction
- 1 Italian Renaissance education: an historiographical perspective
- 2 The elementary school curriculum in medieval and Renaissance Italy: traditional methods and developing texts
- 3 The secondary grammar curriculum
- 4 Latin authors in medieval and Renaissance Italian schools: the story of a canon
- 5 Reading Latin authors in medieval and Renaissance Italian schools
- 6 Rhetoric and style in the school grammar syllabus
- Conclusion
- Appendix I BL Harley 2653: the earliest known manuscript of Ianua
- APPENDIX II A handlist of manuscripts of Ianua
- Appendix III Manuscripts of Tebaldo's Regule
- Appendix IV Handlist of manuscripts of school authors produced in Italy and now found in Florentine libraries
- Appendix V Theoretical grammar manuscripts in Florentine libraries examined and included or eliminated as italian school grammars
- Appendix VI Authorities Cited Explicitly in Manuscripts of Major School Authors in Florentine Libraries
- Bibliography
- Index of manuscripts
- General index
Summary
THE ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL BACKGROUNDS
The concept of a general secondary textbook of Latin grammar did not exist in antiquity. Once pupils had finished learning an elementary manual such as Donatus's Ars minor, the only comprehensive grammatical textbooks were sophisticated and advanced works such as Priscian's Institutiones grammaticae. Other secondary textbooks tended to be specialized, such as Donatus's Ars maior (which dealt with only phonetics, the parts of speech and figures), Priscian's Institutio de nomine pronomine et verbo or Phocas's Ars de nomine et verbo. The methods of teaching Latin had been developed for native speakers. Once the parts of speech had been mastered through a simple morphology such as the Ars minor, what was required for further Latin study was a more sophisticated taxonomic system, such as that offered by Donatus's Ars maior or books I to XVI of Priscian's Institutiones. This would provide the pupil with an ever more sophisticated terminology and framework for the reading and analysis of literary authors. As far as Latin sentence composition was concerned, basic syntax did not have to be taught to native speakers; sophisticated syntactical problems were handled through the doctrine of the figures (treated extensively for example in book of Donatus's Ars maior), which discussed exceptions and permitted lapses of correct grammatical usage.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Humanism and Education in Medieval and Renaissance ItalyTradition and Innovation in Latin Schools from the Twelfth to the Fifteenth Century, pp. 64 - 172Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001