quasi labor intus

It has been a real pleasure to work with Michael Fontaine and William Short on our new volume of academic articles on ambiguity (ambiguitas) in Latin literature, and I’m delighted to announce that it’s now available from The Paideia Institute Press. Paideia’s new publishing arm is really exciting: they publish works according to rigorous scholarly standards (including standard peer review practices) while also striving to maintain affordable prices and encouraging readable prose to improve the accessibility of classical scholarship.

This first volume is being published in honor of Reginald Foster, whose influence on an entire generation of Latinists is difficult to overstate:

For forty years, American priest and friar Reginald Foster, O.C.D., worked in the Latin Letters office of the Roman Curia’s Secretary of State in Vatican City. As Latinist of four popes, he soon emerged as an internationally recognized authority on the Latin language—some have said, the internationally recognized authority, consulted by scholars, priests, and laymen worldwide. In 1986, he began teaching an annual summer Latin course that attracted advanced students and professors from around the globe. This volume gathers contributions from some of his many students in honor of his enduring influence and achievements. Its chapters explore a wide range of linguistic and literary evidence from antiquity to the present day in a variety of theoretical perspectives. If the motivation for putting together this collection has been to reflect (and reflect upon) Foster’s influences on Latin scholarship and pedagogy, its title alludes—via the medieval folk etymology of the word labyrinthus (“quasi labor intus”)—to its theme: ambiguity in Latin literature.

You can find our book on Amazon and (soon!) in your academic institution’s library.