GREEK LITERATURE
- Academic year
- 2021/2022 Syllabus of previous years
- Official course title
- LETTERATURA GRECA SP.
- Course code
- FM0115 (AF:353683 AR:190476)
- Modality
- On campus classes
- ECTS credits
- 6
- Degree level
- Master's Degree Programme (DM270)
- Educational sector code
- L-FIL-LET/02
- Period
- 1st Semester
- Where
- VENEZIA
- Moodle
- Go to Moodle page
Contribution of the course to the overall degree programme goals
‘Epic poetry in fragments: the epic cycle, the Hesiodic corpus, and other poems’. 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 epic texts other than Homeric and strictly Hesiodic (Theogony, Works and Days) of the archaic age from the eigth to the sixth century BCE, which have come down to us only in fragments and can be attributed to a variety of poetic traditions and poets from various areas of Greece. The class is mainly addressed to students graduating in Greek literature, in classical philology, in Latin literature, ancient history and classical archaeology.
Expected learning outcomes
- to know the development of Greek epic poetry in the archaic age, to tell the main features, the innovations, experimentation and the invariants, in a fruitful contrast and integration with the Homeric and Hesiodic poems
- 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
Editions of the cyclic and Hesiodic fragments
Epic cycle: A. Bernabé, Poetae Epici Graeci I, Leipzig 1996 (2nd. ed.); M. Davies, Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, Göttingen 1988; Greek Epic Fragments from the seventh to the fifth centuries B.C., ed. and transl. by M.L. West, Loeb Classical Library 2003 (trad. inglese con testo greco a fronte).
Hesiodic corpus : Fragmenta Hesiodea ed. R. Merkelbach - M.L. West, Oxonii 1967; Hesiodi Theogonia ... Fragmenta selecta edd. F. Solmsen, R. Merkelbach - M.L. West, Oxford University Press 1990 (3a ed.); G.W. Most (ed.), Hesiod: The Shield, Catalogue, Other Fragments, Loeb Classical Library 2018 (2nd ed., trad. inglese con testo greco a fronte).
Italian translations available: translation of the texts will be provided in class by the faculty; for the Hesiodic fragments see Opere di Esiodo, a cura di A. Colonna, Torino 1977, UTET (reprinted by TEA); Esiodo. Opere, introd. transl & comm. by G. Arrighetti, Torino 1998, Einaudi - Gallimard; C. Cassanmagnago (a cura di), Esiodo. Tutte le opere e i frammenti con la prima traduzione degli scolii (testo greco a fronte), Milano 2009, Bompiani.
Bibliography.
Students are requested to read two essays or two chapters, or a detailed commentary of two fragments, from the following bibliography, which is centred on Eumelus and on the cyclic and Hesiodic texts:
J. Schwartz, Pseudo-Hesiodeia. Recherches sur la composition, la diffusion et la disparition ancienne d' oeuvres attribuées à Hésiode, Leiden, Brill, 1960; G.L. Huxley, Greek Epic Poetry from Eumelos to Panyassis, London 1969; M. L. West, The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1985; J. S. BURGESS, The Tradition of the Trojan War in. Homer and the Epic Cycle, Baltimore 2001; M. DAVIES, The Greek Epic Cycle, London, Bristol Classical Press, 20012; M. L. WEST, Eumelos: a Corinthian epic cycle?, «Journal of Hellenic Studies» 122 (2002), 109-33; M. HIRSCHBERGER, Gynaikon Katalogos und Megalai Ehoiai. Ein Kommentar zu den Fragmenten zweier hesiodeischer Epen, München-Leipzig 2004; A. DEBIASI, L'epica perduta. Eumelo, il Ciclo, l'occidente, Roma 2005; R. HUNTER (ed.), The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women. Constructions and Re-constructions, a cura di, Cambridge 2005; E. Cingano, 'The Hesiodic Corpus', in Brill's Companion to Hesiod, ed. by F. Montanari, A. Rengakos, and Chr. Tsagalis, Boston-Köln-Leiden 2009, 91-130; A. Debiasi. Eumelo. Un poeta per Corinto. Con ulteriori divagazioni epiche, Roma 2015; M. Fantuzzi, Chr. Tsagalis (ed.), The Greek Epic Cycle And Its Ancient Reception, Cambridge 2015; AAVV, Esiodo e il corpus Hesiodeum. Problemi aperti e nuove prospettive, “Seminari Romani di cultura greca” 5 (2016); Chr. Tsagalis, Early Greek Epic Fragments I: Antiquarian and Genealogical Epic , Berlin 2017; Chr. Tsagalis (ed.), Studies on the Hesiodic Corpus and its Afterlife, Berlin 2017.
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.