The course aims at illustrating the peculiar philological and ecdotical methodologies of the humanistic text, at providing a critical awareness and enabling students to read and judge a critical edition, to gain a concrete awareness of the strong intertextual relationships that link humanistic texts to classical tradition and, starting from the examination of the exegetical activity of the humanists on the Horatian text, to become aware of the diachronic evolution that leads to modern philology.
Monica Berté-Marco Petoletti, La filologia medievale e umanistica, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2017
Alessandro Perosa, Critica congetturale e testi umanistici, in Id., Studi di filologia umanistica, II. Il Quattrocento fiorentino, a cura di P. Viti, Roma Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2000, pp. 1-40
Non omnis moriar. Die Horaz-Rezeption in der neulateinischen Literatur vom 15. bis zum 17. Jahrhundert La réception d’Horace dans la littérature néo-latine du XVe au XVIIe siècleLa ricezione di Orazio nella letteratura in latino dal XV al XVII secolo (Deutschland – France – Italia), Hildesheim, Olms, 2020 (the book will be made available to students at the Department of Letters and Philosophy. The essays required to be read will be indicated in class).
Learning Objectives
.Knowledge:
This course aims at providing a basic knowledge of the methodology, tools and history of the discipline, and at stimulating a critical attitude.
Skills:
- Knowledge of problems related to philology and ecdotics in general and in particular to medieval and humanistic philology; basic knowledge of philological techniques;
- knowledge of paper and computer tools related to the discipline;
- acquisition of discipline-related concepts and terminology;
- linguistic and philological comprehension of the texts belonging to medieval and humanistic literature;
- knowledge of medieval and humanistic Latin literary culture;
- awareness of the peculiarities of medieval and humanistic Latin;
- awareness of the intertextual relationships that link humanistic texts to classical tradition and of the methods applied by humanists to the study of classics.
Prerequisites
Knowledge of Latin.
Teaching Methods
Lectures; seminar meetings, number of students permitting. Lectures include partial use of computer tools. Students are encouraged to actively participate and to ask questions and further clarifications, even during the office hours.
Further information
Students are reminded that attendance at two thirds of the lectures is compulsory. Only part-time students who do not attend lectures are eligible for alternative examination procedures. These students must contact the professor at the beginning of the course to establish a specific study plan.
Type of Assessment
Oral examination; written accounts will be evaluated if carried out.
The exam is oral for all students, even those who do not attend the course and exchange students (Erasmus and other programmes). The student has to demonstrate sufficient knowledge of all the course subjects: introduction to the discipline and its methodologies; ability to read and judge a critical edition; general knowledge of the themes, authors, works dealt with during lectures; translation and philological commentary of a text read in the course. If students have participated in the course with a report, they have to put it in writing, taking into account the observations emerged from the collective discussion, and the report will be evaluated with the oral exam.
Course program
The introductory part of the course will be dedicated to present the principles of humanistic philology, of “New Philology” and of the textual criticism of humanistic texts. The importance of the relationship with the classics in humanistic literature and of the identification of classical ‘sources’ in a humanistic text will be illustrated, and we will examine, through the exegetical activity of humanists, the birth of philology. Theoretical principles and general issues will be proved and analyzed concretely on the basis of the examination of texts in intertextual relationship with the Horatian production (texts by Petrarch, Landino, Braccesi, Naldi, Filelfo, Strozzi, Marullo, Pontano) and the various exegetical activities of humanists applied to the Horatian text (in particular, Landino, Mancinelli, Parrasio, Ascensio).