An early battle in the history of feminism was the fight for women’s right to study Greek and Latin. Women who learned those languages were ridiculed, called “Amazons” after the mythical warrior women who fought with men. In this hostile climate, Jane Austen’s father and two of her brothers quietly defied convention by secretly teaching her the classical languages. 

In this talk I shall give my evidence for thinking both that Jane Austen knew Latin and that she wanted her education to be known. 

Classical literature was male literature, written by, for, and about men. In Austen’s day, novels were at the bottom of the generic hierarchy as stories by, for, and about women. Austen challenged the hierarchy by having women star in the most famous stories of classical literature. An ambitious writer, she drew on Vergil’s Aeneid for Sense and Sensibility, dressing Oedipus in the costume of a snippy miss, and turning the Odyssey’s hero into a minor character.  

The English language is split into Germanic words from Anglo-Saxon and classical words from Latin and Greek. In my talk I will point out some rewards in studying the ways Jane Austen blended words from both vocabularies to show a character’s social class, education, and emotional state.  

Participants at a religious festivals exist in two times at once—the present, with its daily concerns of family and finances, and the time of myth, where the sacred past is not only remembered but relived. I shall describe the origins of Thanksgiving, which assimilated aspects of the sacred feast as celebrated in the Seder and the Catholic Mass. 

Football, basketball, and baseball follow the sun’s arc across the seasons, each game a ritual enactment. They mirror humanity’s ancient longings—in winter for the sun’s return, in spring for the miracle of plants popping out of the earth, in summer for relief from its withering glare. These sports are more than games; they are seasonal prayers, played out on earth in rhythm with the sky.  

The Wind in the Willows and Mary Poppins are children’s books, but they’re also written for the grown-ups doing the bedtime reading. Beneath all the wild adventures and magical mayhem, there’s a wink to the adult reader—Odysseus reappears dressed in a toad costume, and the Great Mother shows up, impeccably dressed, as Mary Poppins. 

The English language is layered like a lemon meringue pie. At the bottom, you’ve got the short, gritty words from old Germanic roots. Above them spreads the smooth, elegant gloss of words derived from French. And floating above it all is the fluffy meringue—long, grandiose words from Latin and Greek. In this talk, I will look at different slices of English prose, from the Declaration of Independence to the Unabomber, showing how Latinate words can elevate the meaning of the text or justify heinous acts.