GREEK LITERATURE
- Academic year
- 2019/2020 Syllabus of previous years
- Official course title
- LETTERATURA GRECA SP.
- Course code
- FM0115 (AF:308290 AR:170472)
- Modality
- On campus classes
- ECTS credits
- 6
- Degree level
- Master's Degree Programme (DM270)
- Educational sector code
- L-FIL-LET/02
- Period
- Annual
- Where
- VENEZIA
- Moodle
- Go to Moodle page
Contribution of the course to the overall degree programme goals
The many voices of Greek poetry from the classical to the Hellenistic age’. The class, which runs once a week in the second and third modules of the academic year, aims at providing the students with a reading and interpretation of various poetic texts of the classical, pre-Hellenistic and Hellenistic age from the fifth to the first century BCE, which are meant to represent the variety of poetic genres in that period: epic and elegiac poetry, epigrams, hymns, encomia, epinicia, epyllia and poems of other kinds such as inscriptional epigrams. The class is mainly addressed to students graduating in Greek literature, in classical philology, in Latin literature, ancient history and classical archaeology. Every year new authors and new texts will be read and commented upon with the students, with a focus placed on text preserved on papyri and/or handed down through Medieval manuscripts.
Expected learning outcomes
- to know the development of Greek poetry from the archaic to the Alexandrian age, to tell the main features, the innovations, experimentation and the invariants
- to show familiarity with the main critical editions of the texts dealt with and with the main representatives of Hellenistic literature in particular
- to show familiarity with manuscript tradition and with the transmission of texts on papyrus
- to display familiarity with the problems regarding the edition and commentary especially of fragmentary texts
As regards the knowledge and comprehension skills, students will be able:
- to understand the texts and the textual problems they offer, along with problems related to subject matter
- to translate the text into Italian by displaying full awareness of the literary style and sophisticated level of language of the authors
- to comment on the texts and focus on the dialect, linguistic and stylistic features, and also be aware of their debt towards tradition
- to gauge the value and motivation of variants in the apparatus of the edition of the texts
Regarding their skill in evaluating the texts, students are required to prove:
- they can comment on the critical apparatus and textual choices of an editor and on all the problems pertaining to the subject
- to grasp the multilayered complexity of the text and of the intention of the author, such as irony, polemics, or deliberate allusion and intertextuality
Regarding the communication skills, students will prove, by means also of a final paper on a specific text they will present at the end of the year, they can produce a commentary, present it and discuss it in a public performance.
Regarding their learning, they will have to prove they have acquired the technicque in exegesis and interpretation which are of primary importance in approaching and reading the problems and authors of Greek classical and Hellenistic poetry
Pre-requirements
Contents
Referral texts
Texts: J. U. Powell (ed.), Collectanea Alexandrina (323-146 A.C.), Oxford 1925; H. Lloyd-Jones et P.J. Parsons (edd.), Supplementum Hellenisticum, Berlin 1983; R. Pfeiffer (ed.), Callimachus. Vol. I: Fragmenta. Vol. II: Hymni et Epigrammata, Oxford 1949-1953; A.S.F. Gow, Bucolici Graeci, Oxford 1952; C. Gallavotti (ed.), Theocritus quique feruntur bucolici Graeci, 3a ed., Roma 1993;J. L. Lightfoot, Hellenistic Collection (2009, Loeb Classical Library, with trans.); David Sider, Hellenistic Poetry. A Selection, Univ. of Michigan Press 2016..
Translations: G.B. D'Alessio, Callimaco, BUR 2008, 4a ed., 2 voll.; Apollonio Rodio, Le Argonautiche, BUR 1986; Teocrito, Idilli e epigrammi a cura di B.M. Palumbo Stracca, BUR 1993; O. Vox, Carmi di Teocrito e dei bucolici greci minori, Torino 1997; B. Acosta-Hughes, Chr. Cusset, Euphorion. Oeuvre poétique et autres fragments, Paris 2012.
Readings: A.W. Bulloch ‘Poesia ellenistica’, in P. Easterling-B. Knox (a cura di), La letteratura greca della Cambridge University, Vol. II, Milano 1990, 225-363; G. Cambiano, L. Canfora & D. Lanza (edd.), Lo spazio letterario della Grecia antica. Vol. 2: L’ellenismo, Roma 1993; J. Clauss, M. Cuypers (edd.), Blackwell Companion to Hellenistic Literature, Chichester & Malden 2010; M.A. Harder-R.F. Regtuit- G.C. Wakker (edd.), Callimachus, Groningen: Forsten, 1993; B. Acosta-Hughes, L. Lehnus & S. Stephens (edd.). Brill's Companion to Callimachus. Leiden 2011; G.O. Hutchinson, Hellenistic Poetry, Oxford 1988; M. Fantuzzi, R. Hunter, Muse e modelli. La poesia ellenistica da Alessandro Magno ad Augusto, Bari 2002; K. J. Gutzwiller, A Guide to Hellenistic Literature, Chichester 2008.
Syllabus for students unable to attend the course: Callimaco, Inno ad Apollo; Inno a Demetra; epigrammi 1,2, 6, 17, 18, 23, 27; Teocrito, Idilli 16, 18; Apollonio Rodio, libro 4.1-510. Per i commenti ved. N. Hopkinson, A Hellenistic Anthology, Cambridge 1988; R. L. Hunter, Apollonius of Rhodes: "Argonautica" Book IV, Cambridge 2015; E. Livrea, Apolloni Rhodii Argonautica IV, Firenze 1973; A. S. F. Gow, Theocritus. Ed. with a transl. and comm., 2 vols., Cambridge 1952; F. Williams, Callimachus. Hymn to Apollo, Oxford 1978; N. Hopkinson, Callimachus. Hymn to Demeter, Cambridge 1984.
Assessment methods
Teaching methods
Teaching language
Further information
Along with this class students are invited to participate in the Venice seminars of Scienze dell'Antichità, which are articulated in a number of initiatives in the span of the academic year. Participation in 5 seminars together with the writing of a short essay is rated 1CFU (credits), to go in the apprenticeship activities.