PRINCIPLES OF CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY

This course falls among the common mandatory courses of the curriculum in Classics, but is also open to anyone interested to philology in the medieval and modern age. The goals of the course are: to introduce to the concept of philology, to the history and the most important tools of the discipline; to lead to an autonomous reading of the apparatus criticus; to familiarise students with the main topics of the direct and indirect tradition of the Greek and Latin classical texts. These are absolutely necessary skills for anyone wishing to read in a serious and critical manner the ancient literary texts, be it for a goal of stylistic or literary analysis, or as sources of data or information related to history, art history or philosophy.

Knowledge and comprehension
- understand the basic philological terminology
- know the history of the concept and practice of philology, from the Alexandrian through the modern age
- know the basic tools for philological research in the field of Greek and Latin texts
Skills to apply knowledge and comprehension
- be able to use correctly the philological terminology when describing phenomena of textual transmission
- be able to situate historically the main developments of the philological method, and to situate chronologically the handwritten and printed witnesses of a given work;
- be able to situate the main series of critical editions, the main repertories, lexica, and encyclopedias in order to find one's way in the study of philology.
Judgment skills
- be able to ground and motivate a judgment of two or more textual variants
- be able to assess the contribution of a witness to the constitution of a text (primary / secondary; dependent / indepenent)
- be able to discriminate between direct and indirect tradition of a text.
Communication skills
- be able to outline the tradition of a text
- be able to express correctly the main features of a philological problem
Learning skills
- be able to consult the reference works on the history of philology and connect them with the study of texts and of the apparatus criticus

Given the very nature of the subject, a basic knowledge of Greek and Latin is required. Students interested, but with little knowledge of Classical languages, should contact the teacher in order to discuss the possibility of a special syllabus.

The first part of the course will focus on general problems regarding the transmission of texts, as well as the basic characters and principles of philological science related to Classical texts.
The second part of the course will be devoted to a brief illustration of some problems concerning the textual transmission of a Greek and a Latin author, and to the philological reading of selected passages.
Students not attending the course will follow the same syllabus (with the additional reading mentioned in the bibliography), and they will contact the teacher beforehand.

Mandatory reading (for all students):
L. D. Reynolds - N. Wilson, Copisti e filologi, Padova, Antenore 1987 (2 ed.).

Students will have to prepare a translation and a philological commentary of a Greek and a Latin text (they will be made available by the teacher):
1) Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica, l. III, vv. 1-824 ed. F. Vian (Les Belles Lettres, Paris 1980)
2) Vergilius, Aeneis, l. IV, ed. G.B. Conte (Bibliotheca Teubneriana, Berlin-NY 2013)

Optional reading:
M.L. West, Critica del testo e tecnica dell' edizione, Palermo, L'Epos 1991.
J. Delz, Critica testuale ed ecdotica, in F. Graf (ed.), Introduzione alla Filologia Latina, Roma, Salerno 2003, pp. 81-109.
E.J. Kenney, Testo e metodo. Aspetti dell'edizione dei classici latini e greci nell'eta del libro a stampa, edizione italiana riveduta a cura di A. Lunelli, Roma, Gruppo Editoriale Internazionale, 1995.
A. Momigliano, L'eredità della filologia antica e il metodo storico, in Id., Secondo contributo alla storia degli studi classici, Roma, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura 1960, 463-480.

The exam will consist in a conversation that falls in two parts (more or less equivalent in terms of points):
- first the reading (oral translation and philological commentary) of passages from the two authors at issue: the student will display a basic familiarity with Greek and Latin, but above all his ability to interpret critically and gauge the variant readings reported in the apparatus criticus;
- secondly, some questions concerning the main issues related to the history of the transmission of classical texts, as well as to some key principles of ecdotics: the student will display his/her familiarity with the main features of the history of philology, and prove capable of assessing the age and the importance of some significant scholars and/or phenomena in terms of their cultural significance.

Frontal teaching. Images concerning the history of the tradition of Classical texts will be shown during the class.

Italian

A visit to the Biblioteca di Area Umanistica will be organised in order to familiarise the students with the most important study and research tools in the field of Classical studies.

oral