Making Sense and Finding Meaning

My intermediate and advanced Greek and Latin classes are largely translation-based. There’s a lot of discussion among Latin teachers about whether that’s a good approach, but much of the dispute is, I think, mired in terminological ambiguity, and at least some of the objections to translation classes don’t entirely apply to what we’re doing. What… Continue reading Making Sense and Finding Meaning

The Forest in the Garden

Literature often gives us pairs of similar images with sharply contrasting implications or referents. In the symbolic vocabulary of an earlier age, the garden, with all its Edenic connotations, was a symbol of safety, confinement, order, and harmony. The language of medieval love poetry is filled with gardens representing the beloved. The very term “paradise”… Continue reading The Forest in the Garden