One of my great pleasures is teaching at the JACT Latin Camp each summer. Though for many it will sound the very definition of a busman’s holiday, it is a distillation of much of what I value in teaching: an intensity of purpose; a joy in learning for its own sake; a thorough engagement with literature as opposed to the paltry prescription for public exams.
It also allows a degree of experimentation in my approach to particular points of grammar and syntax; whereas one might fall back on tried-and-tested resources in the heat of term, I found myself with a little more time with which I could try a new ‘take’ on part of the A Level curriculum.
Each tutor will offer a couple of clinics over the two weeks in Harrogate: I was assigned the introduction to Ovidian Verse at A Level. I’ve offered a guide elsewhere on how to guide students through this dreaded part of the unseen translation paper; however, I thought that I would play with a different approach, focusing on what I consider to be the trickiest elements of these poems – namely, omission of words; alternative endings of words; convoluted order of words.
I have often found pupils have been intimidated by the ‘complexity’ of Ovid, whereas, in reality, they are thrown off by the stylistic features above. (Another common area of concern is the novelty of Ovidian vocabulary: at the end of the day, vocabulary is vocabulary, and needs to be learnt).
Instead of leaning into the ‘complexity’ of Ovid’s verse, therefore, I suggested that pupils might want to approach these texts not as something to be feared, but instead something to be corrected.
By the time that A Level students meet Ovid properly, they should have hopefully covered the A Level curriculum in terms of grammar and vocabulary; there will be nothing in Ovid’s verse, therefore, that should be shockingly new to them.
However, the combination of the stylistic elements listed above is often enough to disturb them; but, if those facets have been rectified for them, pupils find that Ovid is in fact far simpler than the respective prose unseen.
You can experiment with your set: simply take a couplet of, say, the Metamorphoses which demonstrates one (or more) of the features given above.
Then write out a ‘corrected’ version: if Ovid has omitted part of esse from a verb, put it back in; if he has given a syncopated perfect, write out the whole verb; if he has divorced nouns from their adjectives – and he will have done – perform your own recoupling.
Give them the unadapted couplet first, before offering them the emended version. In the short term, pupils will be struck at how much simpler their task has become; over a longer period of time, they will observe the … ….
To summarise: I am now teaching my pupils to edit Ovid. I don’t feel too heretical doing so: Ovid’s friends were of a similar opinion, even if they were more concerned with what he retained, rather than what he omitted!
For my pupils, Ovid is a slapdash author writing lazily to a deadline; they, his dutiful copy-editors, have the job of rendering his Latin more digestible.
(If you would like to elaborate upon this, ask your pupils to rewrite Ovid so that younger year groups – say Year 12 – would be able to translate him).
Here are my five major quirks – or recurring errors! – for your pupils to focus upon:
- Separation of noun and adjective – pupils need a perfect understanding of their noun / adjective paradigms in order to locate and reunite pairs of words that are regularly placed far apart.
2. Omission of esse – pupils should become suspicious of ‘dangling’ 4th PPP/PAPs; too often these are actually perfect / pluperfect passive (or deponent) main verbs.
3. Syncopated perfects – again, pupils should be sceptical of verb forms that appear to be infinitive-like; these can be 3rd person plural indicative perfect active verbs, or (more rarely) 2nd person singular indicative future passives.
4. ‘is’ = ‘es’ – pupils should become open to Ovid’s use of the ‘archaic ‘-is’’, where ‘-is’ endings can actually be hidden ‘-es’ forms.
5. Rearrangement of relative pronouns and prepositions – Ovid can often ignore the ‘regular’ prose order of seemingly set words. (Also note the constant omission of prepositions, most frequently in).
As an extra-level of scaffolding, I will also produce a version of the lesson’s unseen with the word order supplied for pupils; this is particularly useful for lower-ability students.
I will take this approach during the first term of the fast-approaching academic year, and I predict that three connected things will happen:
- pupils will spot the quirks of Ovidian verse;
- pupils will grow more confident in letting their eye roam across the entirety of an Ovidian couplet;
- pupils will soon start to realise that translating Ovid is rarely little more than a sustained exercise in noun-adjective / noun-participle agreement.
Happy editing and best wishes for the year to come!
