LATIN LITERATURE

The course of LATIN LITERATURE is a training activity of the study plan of the Bachelor's Degree in "Humanities": it is among the "Core educational activities" of the curriculum "Antiquities" and among the "Interdisciplinary" activities of the curriculum "Science of the literary text and communication". It represents a more advanced step in the didactic path concerning the Latin language and literature, after the course of LATIN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE (FT0435), whose examination is presupposed as a requirement for access.
The course is part of the educational activities intended to provide students with a general knowledge of the languages and literatures of classical antiquity and proposes a more in-depth approach to the Latin literature through the reading, translation, interpretation and historical and literary analysis of a work or a significant sample of texts in the original language. The aim of the course is to enrich and refine the knowledge of the Latin language and literature, and at the same time to put students in contact with the critical problems and current methodologies of historical-literary research and interpretation of texts, with the scientific bibiliography and critical tools of literary and philological research, also as pertains the knowledge and use of the main IT tools.

The outcome of this didactic activity is the knowledge of a work or a selection of latin literary texts in the original language and of their main historical and interpretative problems. Students should then be able to read, understand, translate into Italian and comment on the historical-literary and stylistic plan the text or texts treated by the teacher during the course, and to discuss on them in light of the proposed explanation and the bibliography.
Already equipped with linguistic skills at least intermediate level, students should also acquire through the course a greater familiarity with the Latin literary language, a broader set of linguistic knowledge and a more secure ability to translate from Latin into Italian; at the same time, the study of the bibliography should refine their knowledge of categories, concepts and critical vocabulary of philological and historical-literary research in Latin and (more widely) humanistic fields, and their ability to display and discuss matters and problems of literary history.

The exam of LATIN LITERATURE requires a general knowledge of the history of Latin language and literature and a linguistic competence of Latin at least intermediate level.
Students who want to take the exam must have already taken the exam of LATIN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE (FT0435) or have already acquired 9/12 credits of Latin Language and Literature (L-FIL-LET/04).
To access the exam students must also certify their knowledge of Latin language by passing the Test of Latin 2 (http://www.unive.it/data/insegnamento/263176 ).

The cultural life of Trajan's Rome in the mirror of Pliny's Letters.
Public recitations, requests for reciprocal corrections and exchanges of information between authors, reading judgements, publication and circulation of new works, acts of patronage and literary patronage: the nine books of Pliny the Younger's "Epistulae ad familiares" are a fundamental source of information on the intellectual practices of Rome's elites in the years of Trajan's principate.
The guided reading of a selection of Pliny's letters will give an insight into the multifaceted cultural life of Rome at the height of the Empire through the lively testimony of one of its main protagonists, and at the same time provide an approach to an exemplary work of Latin epistolography and of the literary prose of the high imperial age.

1) Notes from the lessons.
2) A. N. SHERWIN-WHITE, Pliny, the Man and His Letters, "Greece & Rome" 16 (1969), pp. 76-90 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/642902 ]
3) R. SYME, Tacito, ed. it. Brescia, Paideia, 1967, vol. I, pp. 107-137.
4) L. CASTAGNA, Teoria e prassi dell'amicizia in Plinio il Giovane, in: L. CASTAGNA - E. LEFEVRE (eds.), Plinius der Jüngere und seine Zeit, München-Leipzig, Saur, 2003, pp. 145-172.
5) C. SANTINI, La comunicazione epistolare, in: C. SANTINI-C. PELLEGRINO-F. STOK, Dimensioni e percorsi della letteratura latina, Roma, Carocci, 2010, pp. 149-169.
6) P. CUGUSI, Evoluzione e forme dell'epistolografia latina nella tarda repubblica e nei primi due secoli dell'impero, Roma, Herder, 1983, pp. 207-229.

The course programme includes knowledge of the above bibliography and the Latin texts read by the teacher and made available in Moodle.
Not attending students are also required to read SVETONIUS, Life of Domitian, in the original text.

Learning is verified through an oral interview in which the students must demonstrate to be able to read, understand, translate into Italian and comment on the stylistic and historical-literary level some passages of the work or selection of texts which has been read by the teacher or assigned as personal reading; students must also be able to discuss the bibliography and to use it in the interpretation of texts.

Frontal lessons, mainly based on reading, translation, and linguistic, stylistic, historical-literary commentary of the work or selection of texts treated during the course. The use of some computer aids (lexicons and online databases, specialized sites, etc.) to support the explanation is intended to offer students an overview of the main IT scientific tools currently available for philological research on ancient Latin literature.

Italian

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