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Michael Fontaine
Professor and Associate Vice Provost of Undergraduate Education
Overview
Keywords
Latin Literature, Classics, ancient Rome, ancient Comedy, Plautus, Terence, jokes, puns, wine, Virgil, neo-Latin
Departments/Programs
- Classics
Graduate Fields
- Classics
Research
- Latin literature of all time periods and classical Roman society. Humanism, not philology. Wine, comedy, jokes, Virgil, classical ideas about the mind, psychiatry, or mental illness, and the application of social psychology to classical texts.
Beyond Cornell, I'm an advisory board member of The Paideia Institute. I'm a big proponent of teaching Latin as an active, living (spoken) language (see here), which is how I learned it.
I regularly consult on Latin for museums, institutions, dealers, and collectors. I've exposed forgery in Renaissance and Dutch Golden Age paintings, discovered the forgotten provenance of a major manuscript, and I interpret manuscripts, books, maps, and engravings of all kinds. Please email me if you need help.
In 2016 I received the Thomas S. Szasz Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Cause of Civil Liberties.
Click here for my CV. My newest projects are listed below, not including the translation I'm working on now of selections from Melchior de Polignac's epic Anti-Lucretius (1745). (Polignac (1661-1742) was an older contemporary of Voltaire (1694-1778), who read his epic.)
Courses
Publications
For a complete list, click here. Book reviews are here.
New Books
1. 2019 (in press). The Pig War. (An illustrated edition and translation of Johannes Placentius' 1530 Pugna Porcorum). Paideia Institute Press.
2. 2019 (in press). How to Drink: A Classical Guide to the Art of Imbibing. Princeton University Press. (A translation and edition of Vincent Obsopoeus’ 1537 De Arte Bibendi).
3. 2018. (co-ed.) Quasi Labor Intus: Ambiguity in Latin Literature (Essays in Honor of Fr. Reginald Foster, OCD) (co-ed. with Charles McNamara and William Short). Paideia Institute Press. Frontispiece painted by Lucy Plowe.
New Articles:
(in press). "Camerarius Camelarius: A New Salt Road to the Modern World." Plautus in der Frühen Neuzeit. (On the manuscript tradition of Plautus' comedies; allegory painted by Lucy Plowe)
(in press). ‘Before Pussy Riot: Free Speech and Censorship in the Age of Plautus.’ (On Sotades as the "barbarian poet" in Miles Gloriosus; line drawings by Lucy Plowe; spot the palindromes.)
(in press). ‘Joannes Burmeister.’ Frühe Neuzeit in Deutschland 1620–1720: Literaturwissenschaftliches Verfasserlexikon (VL17). (new poems, and argues that B. died of plague.)
2018. 'The Myth of Ovid's Exile.' Electryone (will appear elsewhere in Chinese translation.)
2018. 'A Cute Illness in Epidaurus: Eight sick jokes in Plautus' Gorgylio (Curculio).' Quasi Labor Intus: Ambiguity in Latin Literature.