HISTORY AND PRINCIPLES OF TEXTUAL CRITICISM

The module is aimed at providing students with the basic knowledge to approach the study of manuscript traditions. Furthermore students will be given an overview of the most used editorial principles related to textual production in the Germanic-speaking world in the Middle Ages.

1. to know and understand the issues related to the transmission of literary texts in the medieval and modern Germanic-speaking territories; to know and understand both the philological procedures and the theorizations about how to make a critical edition.
2. To be able to identify the issues related to the transmission of texts and the philolgical procedures that are needed to restore the text in the closest form as possible to the original; to acquire awareness of the linguistic, stylistic, historical and cultural, palaeographic and codicological knowledge that is required to make a critical edition.
3. To be able to identify - by comparing manuscript witnesses, or print witnesses, with modern editions of the text - the procedure followed by editors as well as to judge, by way of the analysis of the critical discussion, the different degrees of appropriateness of the choices the editors made to restore the text.
4. To be able to talk in a clear and technically adequate way about the contents of the course, using a style that suits the communicative context.

Non sono previsti prerequisiti

- the conversion to Christianity and the beginning of written transmission
- the transmission of texts in the Germanic Middle Ages
- The critical edition: principles and process
- The diplomatic edition
- the New Philology approach to textual criticism and the valorization of each single manuscript as unique historical witness
- Examples from various Germanic areas (Old and Middle English, Old High German and Middle High German, Icelandic and Swedish)

- Paolo Chiesa, Elementi di critica testuale, Bologna: Patron, 2012.

The oral examination will assess how the students have understood the course's contents according to the learning objectives declared in the syllabus

Oral examination

More specifically:
- Knowledge and understanding: checked through content questions;
- Applying knowledge and understanding: checked through a practical exercise, such as the description and assessment of an edition;
- Making judgements: checked through methodological questions;
- Communication skills: checked through assessment of how students answer questions using technical words and how they are able to construct a discourse;
- Learning skills: evaluation of the students' autonomy of judgement.

The module consists of lectures and practical exercises on manuscripts in facsimile

Italian

oral