OVERVIEW

Literary experience and transformation of the gaze on the world.

Listening to novels, reading stories, immersing yourself in the reading of a novel is an experience that transforms the reader and consequently changes his view of the world, which undergoes an unexpected metamorphosis. In the tradition of the ancient novel this metamorphosis of the world, consequent to the experience of listening or reading, becomes a literary motif destined to extraordinary adventures in the European literary tradition.
 

AIMS AND CONTENT

LEARNING OUTCOMES

The students of the course will have to develop, in addition to an in-depth knowledge of the Latin texts at master's level, also a good theoretical awareness of the mechanisms of their reception in European literature, and a practical ability to investigate such lending, imitation, re-use and rewriting traditions ( in close parallel with what is similar in the tradition of visual arts) through the exemplary cases presented during the course.

AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

The students of the course will have to acquire:

- an in-depth master's knowledge of Latin texts, demonstrated through the reading and analysis of the proposed texts;

- a good theoretical awareness of the mechanisms of their reception in European literature, gained through the examples illustrated during the course;

  - the practical ability to investigate such lending, imitation, re-use and rewriting traditions (in close parallel with what is similar in the visual arts tradition) through the exemplary cases presented during the seminar work.

PREREQUISITES

A solid knowledge of the history of Latin Literature and of the Latin language is required, as well as the successful completion (at the three-year or master's degree) of the Preliminary written Test of Translation from Latin.

TEACHING METHODS

Lectures, seminar discussion based on papers produced by the students

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

Literary experience and transformation of the gaze on the world.

Listening to tales, reading stories, immersing oneself in the reading of a novel is an experience that transforms the reader: and consequently changes his gaze on the world, which undergoes an unexpected metamorphosis. In the tradition of the novel, since antiquity, this metamorphosis of the world resulting from the experience of listening or reading becomes a literary motif in itself, which offers the opportunity to reflect on the enormous mythopoetic power of literature, but which also allows to look with irony to the alteration and distortion that 'minor' literary genres, with an uncertain literary status, operate on the view of their readers' world.

In Apuleius, listening to tales of magic by the protagonist/narrator Lucio during his trip to Thessaly, land of sorceresses, drives him at his arrival in the Tessalian city of Ipata to look at everything around him as a deceptive landscape , in which behind every frond, every rock, every source hide humans transformed into trees, solidified into stone, dissolved in water by force of magic. It is a sort of literary delirium, which will have a certain part in the misadventure in which Lucius will incurr not long after his arrival, and which will lead him to be tried for murder.  Apuleius, himself a writer of tales of magic incorporated in the his novel, plays on the subtle and ambiguous ridge that now leads him to adhesion and now instead to criticism not only towards magic as such, but also towards the same novelistic subgenre of magic tales itself.

Certainly different is the way in which the motif of the metamorphosis of the world  connected to reading appears in Augustine, and in particular in what we could call the 'autobiographical novel' of his Confessions. The reading of a fundamental book often appears as the engine of that inner metamorphosis which is conversion, which is also a change of view on the world: something like this happens to Augustine already with the reading of the Ciceronian Hortensius, that pushes him towards philosophy, but above all it will be the 'minor' literary genre of the Lives of the Saints, and in particular the reading of the Life of Antonius, which is at the center of a description of an act of reading that causes an instantaneous inner metamorphosis of the readers.

If in Augustine there emerges only a positive evaluation of the reading experiences that lead to conversion, in the subsequent re-emergence in the European literary tradition of the literary motif of reading as a metamorphosis of the reader's world view, we will see the re-emergence of the oscillating attitude between adhesion and self-criticism already identified in Apuleius.

This will happen in the Dante's story of Paolo and Francesca, in the Quixote of Cervantes, in the 'quixotism' of so much English literature between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, up to that reflection on the very genre of the novel around which Flaubert's Madame Bovary is built . During the course we will examine the long itinerary followed in European literature by this fascinating literary motif, which focuses on the extraordinary relationship established between books and readers.

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

A) Apuleius, Metamorphosis, books 1-3 (the passages read in class)

Bibliography: Apuleio, Le Metamorfosi, ed. BUR by Lara Nicolini

B) Augustine, Confessions, book 8 (and other passages read in class)

Bibliography: Agostino, Le Confessioni, Milano, Mondadori, Series Lorenzo Valla, or Agostino, Confessioni, edited by Roberta De Monticelli, Milan, Garzanti, 1990;

Sant'Agostino, Conversion stories (Confessioni, Libro VIII), edited by Fabio Gasti, Venice, Marsilio Universal Literature, Series of classics Il Convivio, 2012.

C) In class the works and / or passages of modern authors to be read will be indicated, possibly also in Italian translation in the case of foreign authors: in particular the episode of Paolo and Francesca in Dante's Inferno; the Filocolo of Boccaccio; the Don Quixote by Cervantes, Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen, Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert.

D) Non-attending students will integrate the program with Gabriella Moretti's article uploaded in PDF on Aulaweb and with the list of readings that will be reported on Aulaweb at the end of the course.

TEACHERS AND EXAM BOARD

Exam Board

GABRIELLA MORETTI (President)

LARA NICOLINI

BIAGIO SANTORELLI

DILETTA VIGNOLA

LESSONS

LESSONS START

Monday 17 February 2020

Class schedule

The timetable for this course is available here: Portale EasyAcademy

EXAMS

EXAM DESCRIPTION

Oral exam possibly preceded by a seminar work presented orally and delivered in written form to the teacher during the course.

ASSESSMENT METHODS

The exam will first examine the student's competences regarding the Latin language, and will focus in particular on the ascertainment of stylistic, rhetorical and interpretative skills through the translation and exegesis of the Latin texts in the program. 

In the second phase of the oral examination the relationships (sometimes genetic, but more often of simple similarity and parallelism on a comparative level) between the ancient texts and the traditions in European literary history that find in them their starting point will be examined. 

Part of the evaluation will also be based on possible seminar work exposed by the students during the course.

Exam schedule

FURTHER INFORMATION

Attendance is strongly recommended: an active class attendance, with preparation of the pieces from time to time addressed, will be evaluated during the exam.

Those who for serious reasons could not attend should contact the teacher within the first month of the course.

For students with linguistic problems, the following cycles of lessons will be activated:

1) a cycle of 60-hour lessons, for absolute beginners, held in the first semester (organized by the "Beni Culturali" Course, but also open and strongly recommended to students of all Degree Courses), to be integrated with the help of tutors for practical exercises and their correction.

2) a cycle of lessons at an intermediate level of 36 hours, held in the second semester, to be integrated with the help of tutors for practical exercises and their correction.

3) a 30-hour Translation Laboratory held in the first semester by prof. Biagio Santorelli, obligatory for classicists who had not passed the admission test consisting of a version from Latin (but VERY WELL RECOMMENDED to ALL classicists), and also open to all interested modernists, in particular to pass the propaedeutic Test of Translation from Latin.