Ernst von Leutsch's handwritten notes for lectures he gave on the history of Latin literature, at the University of Göttingen, compiled over a period of years. Judging from the distribution of dates in bibliographical references it seems unlikely that much of the manuscript could date from earlier than 1845; however, several small leaves in the section on rhetoric (part 6) are written on the versos of fragments of correspondence dated 1834. The latest date found was 1870 (in part 2). Included in part 1 is a separate, cleanly copied outline with the heading: Lateinische Literatur-Geschichte (12 leaves), as well as a leaf headed Gentlemen (Meine Herren), dated in Leutsch's hand 1867 (the last digit uncertain), comprising opening remarks for the course that take as their starting point the particular esteem enjoyed by German universities, and draw a correlation to the importance laid upon an overview of the ancient Greek and Latin worlds. That point is also reflected in the first section heading (Nothwendigkeit der Kenntniss von der Literaturgeschichte des classischen Alterthums). At the back of part 1 are two additional versions of opening remarks, and of the beginning of the lectures. The manuscript (divided into parts based roughly on content) covers the following topics: Part 1 (Box 30): Introduction (study aids, sources, methods, review of scholarly literature), the Roman people (Volk) and the development of Latin as a literary language, thematic content, genres, and Latin literary history in chronological overview up to the First Punic War. Part 2 (Box 30): the literary history from the end of the First Punic War to the end of the Augustan Age, including an overview of the historical development of genres, with some focus on epos, or epic poetry. Part 3 (Box 31): drama; epos (didactic, trochaic, iambic); transitions to lyric poetry (fable, Christian epic, idyll, bucolic). Part 4 (Box 31): lyric poetry (epigram, epode, satire, elegy, epistle, ode, epithalamium). Part 5 (Box 32): outlines/overviews of prose (rhetoric, philosophy, jurisprudence, historiography). Part 6 (Box 32): rhetoric. Part 7 (Box 33): philosophic and scientific prose. Part 8 (Box 33): historiography. Included in part 4 is a section of unidentified notes in a different hand, paginated 89 to 174, that seem to be part of an introduction to Latin rhetoric, with references dated no later than 1814.
