Hi, Thesaure,
I myself enjoy reading -besides Classical (specially, I love Epic, Bucolic, &c.), and some Medieval stuff- those works produced by European humanists of the XVI-XVII centuries, concretely those works related to Neostoicism. I don't like sometimes the bad use of Latin made onwards from these centuries. Well, I'll give you some names, links, &c., and let me know your objections, or other things which you´d wish to deal about.
(And, well, if you say "renaissance texts" I can also answer you by means of Iohannes Boccaccio, Petrarca and Dante. I must confess that I feel, specially Francesco Petrarca, more in favor to the Italian language (fiorentino) in his Latin writings than in favor of a mere and pure Latin.)
-Boccaccio:
http://www.grexlat.com/biblio/boccaccio/index.html (
Bucolicum, I´d recommend)
- Petrarch:
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k725248
http://diglib.hab.de/wdb.php?dir=inkunabeln/160-quod-2f
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k58300r
http://www.bibliotecaitaliana.it/xtf/vi ... 000299.xml
(Please, read
De Remediis utriusque fortunae, it´s very good but I haven´t finished it yet)
- Iustus Lipsius:
http://fondosdigitales.us.es/books/sear ... age=435370
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k1101361
http://warburg.sas.ac.uk/pdf/cok229w.pdf (
De cruce libri tres)
Specially, try to find in Latin an able-to-download version his work on Constancy.
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k107856k
http://www.juntadeandalucia.es/cultura/ ... ion=pagina
- I. C. Scaliger:
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k52521t
and take a look at his editions of Classics in
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ by writing his name.
- Valla:
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k52130p (Laurentii Vallae Elegantiarum latinae lingua)
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k71758w
- Melanchthon:
http://books.google.com/books?id=tyoMAA ... =&as_brr=1 (Take a look at the index of his Works and you´ll find a lot of interesting things to you.)
- Erasmus:
http://www2.fh-augsburg.de/~harsch/Chro ... _enco.html
(Brilliant and amusing.)
Besides, you can read some compositions by Giacomo Leopardi, which are always entertaining:
http://www.bibliotecaitaliana.it/xtf/vi ... nd=default
(*) These are only some reading suggestions.
As for
Colloquia, I like them as a
pædagogical tool. I'm not very old (I'm seventeen years old) but if I had children, I would use these Colloquia (and other ones, and Orberg's
Lingua Latina, of course) in order to make them fluent in Latin, &c.
(We had sometime ago a discussion related to spoken Latin, its pros and cons (as I think), and other questions.
http://www.textkit.com/greek-latin-foru ... 7&start=20 )
Regards,
Gonzalo