Andrew Dinan Discusses His “Americana Latine,” An Anthology of American Latin
Binx Bolling, the anti-hero of Walker Percy’s award-winning novel The Moviegoer, claims: “I am attracted to movie stars but not for the usual reasons . . . It is their peculiar reality which astounds me.” The dreariness of a March day in New Orleans is quickened when Binx unexpectedly catches sight of William Holden walking through the French Quarter. In Binx’s estimation, “an aura of heightened reality moves with him and all who fall within it feel it.”
Heightened reality, for some of us, is conferred not by Hollywood stardom but by the Latin language. Such is the effect of…
One of the best ways to get a sense of the range and diversity of the texts assembled in Americana Latine is to take a look at the table of contents, which we provide here:
Preface Abbreviations Introduction 1 Vinland (11th century) 1.1 Greenland (12th–15th centuries) 2 Columbus’s First Voyage (1492) 3 The World Divided (1493) 4 John and Sebastian Cabot (1498, 1508) 5 America Placed and Named (1507) 6 Florida (1513) 7 Verrazzano in New York (1524) 8 Native American Rights (1537) 9 Coronado in Kansas (1541) 10 Mexico City (1554) 11 Florida: Hunting and the Ballgame (1565) 12…
