For Immediate Release	                                       January 23, 1996
 
Lawrence University's Taylor Awarded NEH Grant for History of Linguistic
Classic 
 
	
	APPLETON, WIS. - Daniel J. Taylor's forthcoming "mystery" saga will be
decidedly more scholarly than some of the classics penned by the likes of
Raymond Chandler or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  But just like all great detective
stories, Taylor's will have its share of power-hungry men, intrigue and
secrecy, theft and neglect.      
	With the help of a prestigious $30,000 National Endowment for the
Humanities Fellowship for College Teachers, Taylor, professor of classics at
Lawrence University, will spend the 1996-97 academic year in Italy chronicling
one of the great mysteries in the history of books.  Culminating nearly 20 years
of research, Taylor's monograph will detail the history of "De Lingua Latina"
("On the Latin Language"), an acknowledged scholarly classic written in the
first century B.C. by Marcus Terentius Varro, ancient Rome's most prolific
scholar and authority in the history of Roman language science.
	The original "De Lingua Latina" consisted of 25 books or chapters, but
only a single copy of six of the books - chapters 5-10 - remained by the start
of the early Middle Ages.  That copy, known to Varronian scholars simply as
"F", is in the form of a manuscript which was painstakingly transcribed by a
Benedictine monk at the Monte Cassino monastery in the 11th century.  Enduring
several centuries of skullduggery by some of history's most learned and
powerful men, "F" managed to survive.  It now resides in the famed Laurenziana
Library in Florence, Italy, locked under glass and literally chained to an
elegant bookshelf designed and built by Michelangelo.
	"I've felt a bit like a private investigator all these years researching
'F,' said Taylor, considered the world's leading authority on Varro and the
famed manuscript.  "Like any good detective, I've had to track down evidence,
follow up on leads and sometimes speculate on motives.  This grant will help me
finally tell the story of a real-life mystery classic."	
	In his monograph, Taylor will detail the history of the famed 
manuscript, the sole source for the extant text of "De Lingua Latina," from its
11th-century birth in Monte Cassino to its eventual home in the Laurenziana
library some 500 years later.  
	"F,'" checkered history reads like many popular mystery novels.  Abused
and neglected for decades, it was stolen by the Italian poet Giovanni Boccaccio,
who willed it to the friars of Santo Spirito upon his death.  "F" was believed
to be subsequently stolen again, this time by Niccolo Niccoli, Florence's most
accomplished book collector of his time.  It wound up in the hands of the
famous Medici family when Niccoli's manuscripts were used to pay off his debts
at the time of his death.  "F" next surfaced in the library of San Marco, but
again disappeared, presumably spirited away by the Medicis.  When the Medicis
were driven from Florence into exile, their palace was ransacked and "F," along
with many other important works, were mutilated, but not destroyed, by
assailants unknown.  "F" eventually turned up in the catalog records of the
newly opened Laurenziana Library in the late 16th century.
	Taylor, whose research on Varro was supported previously with an NEH
grant in 1980, will spend his year abroad in both Florence and Rome.  When
finished, his historical thriller is expected to be published in the country's
leading monograph series on the history of linguistics.
	A 1963 graduate of Lawrence, Taylor joined his alma mater's faculty in
1974.  He was selected as the Distinguished Foreign Language Educator of the
year in 1990 by the Wisconsin Association of Foreign Language Teachers and
received the National Award for Excellence in Teaching the Classics in 1983
from the American Philological Association.