Lectures latines. 45 textes de la littérature latine interprétés par des professeurs. En hommage à Sylvie Franchet d’Espèrey

Why should we read the Classics? For many years, the answer to this question seemed obvious; however, the “crisis” that the humanities face today demands on our part urgent reflection.

This book does not list the various reasons (educational, cultural, intellectual) that have often been put forward as a learned academic defence of the importance of Ancient Greek and Latin. Instead, the importance of the Classics emerges from the plurality of voices gathered here. At the moment of her retirement from Paris-Sorbonne University where she taught Latin language and literature, Sylvie Franchet d’Espèrey asked some colleagues, students, and friends to choose a page from Latin literature and to explain, in a personal way that would not exclude accurate analysis, what this text means for them.

The variety of the contributors to this volume in terms of academic position, age and personality reveals a taste for Latin that is at one and the same time uniform but diverse, divergent but vigorous.

This tribute to Sylvie Franchet d’Espèrey is thus aimed at a larger audience than that usually addressed by academic celebratory volumes.