What I am Reading: March 2022

 If I’m going to be honest to myself and this blog’s past, at least to some limited degree, it might be of interest to the few readers here what exactly it is that I am currently reading in my autumn reading renaissance (pun intended, as you shall soon see).  I have finished two books already this year and am alternating between several others, due in part to the nature of the readings I am doing.

When I began reading again for pleasure after years of barely reading, I began first by sating my years-long curiosity about literary works from the Eastern Roman/Byzantine era as well as the Italian Renaissance period.  In doing several Wikipedia searches, I discovered that Harvard University Press not only was continuing the century-long Loeb Classical Library, but had also launched three complementary lines of bilingual collections:  Dumbarton Oaks (medieval Roman/Byzantine, Old English, c. 400-1300 Medieval Latin literature); I Tatti Renaissance Library (1300-1550 Renaissance Latin works); and the Murty Classical Library of India (primarily focused on works in several Indo-Aryan works of the past five hundred years or so translated into English, many for the first time).  Out of these libraries (and the Loeb Classical Library), I began alternating poems or sections, relearning my college Latin or learning how to read (Medieval) Greek for the first time.  I found myself bouncing back and forth, enjoying the literary connections that I had begun to make between these works.

First, here are the two books I’ve completed, followed by the ones I anticipate finishing by the end of April:

1.  (Trans. by Denison B. Hull), Digenis Akritas:  The Two-Blood Border Lord (translation only, already reviewed)

2.  (Dumbarton Oaks, v. 14):  Pseudo-Methodius, Apocalypse (medieval Greek/English/Latin; Anonymous, An Alexandrian World Chronicle (6th century Latin/English translation).  I may write more about this in the coming month, if time permits.

Books I’m Currently Reading: 

Marco Girolamo Vida, Christiad.  Renaissance Latin epic poetry of the Crucifixion.  Bilingual I Tatti Renaissance Library edition.

Michael Andreopoulos, The Byzantine Sinbad. 11th century Greek version of a pan-Levantine series of tales similar to and yet distinct from The Thousand and One Nights.  Bilingual Dumbarton Oaks edition.

Various, Carmina Burana.  12th and 13th century secular Latin poetry collected from a single surviving manuscript.  Dumbarton Oaks bilingual edition.

Ludovico Ariosto, Latin Poetry.  The 15th/16th century Latin poems that the author of Orlando Furioso had written over the course of his life.  Bilingual I Tatti Renaissance Library edition.

Vergil, Aeneid:  Books I-VI.  The Loeb Classical Library bilingual Latin/English edition.  I’m re-reading Vergil in Latin in preparation for reading an “extension” that was written by Mateo Vegio that’s found in his Short Epics I Tatti Renaissance Library bilingual edition.

I am also working my way slowly through textbooks teaching me the basics of Old English, Old French, and Old Occitan.  Just in the mood these days for discovering these “other” classics and perhaps being one more generational link in the discussion and preservation of these millennium-old works.