AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

Students must acquire the methodologies and tools to autonomously interpret and analyse any given Latin text from the point of view of its tradition, and with special attention to all the problems related to the transmission. Students must therefore be familiar not only with issues of grammar, syntax and metrics, but also with the peculiar lexicon of textual criticism

The course particularly aims at providing students with the skills to analyze both the problems in the literary texts selected by the lecturer and the best textual solutions given to them; students will be able to apply the tools of textual criticism along with literary history, and will acquire skills to deal with any other manuscript traditions and to examine any kind of textual problems. At the end, the students will acquire:

-       Knowledge of the pre- and post-Lachmannian practice of textual criticism, of the  critique rules and precepts to emend ancient texts;

-       knowledge of the tradition and ecdotical history of a series of latin texts;

-       Ability to apply the learned methodology to any other Latin texts. 

-       Ability to read a latin text and to identify and explain the main textual problems / loci vexati contained in it, as well as to describe the different solutions for them.

-        Ability to analyze and comment text and apparatus of any given literary edition (among the main modern critical editions such as OCT, Teubner, Budé, etc.).

TEACHING METHODS

Lectures in classroom; each lecture will last 2 hours; towards the end of the course, some lectures may take the form of seminars (depending on the students' ability). Participation to the classes is strongly encouraged, though attendance at the course is not mandatory in order to take the exam. During the lessons, students will be given advices and suggestions to prepare the exam and will take advantage of some hints and test simulation. See also italian section.

NB Lessons will be held in presence. Attendance, although not compulsory, is recommended. Only those who attend lessons in presence will be deemed attending students.  The teacher, upon specific request by single students, could allow them to attend lessons remotely via Teams. Non - attending students will read and discuss an additional essay, selected by the lecturer.

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

On the training ground. The Aegritudo Perdicae

 The Aegritudo Perdicae is a remarkable anonymous poem, an epyllion narrating, in 290 hexameters, Perdica's incestuous desire for his mother. The poem, probably composed in North Africa in the fifth century A.D., lay low until 1877, at which time it promised scholars much to study in the way of sources, motifs, and imitative echoes, giving them, before all else, a highly corrupted text. And even after the two editions by Emil Baehrens and the assiduous studies of other German scholars, and two different editions by two Italian philologists, this text still challenges us to make new, or re-evaluate old, corrections of its multifariously corrupted fifteenth-century manuscript.

The lecturer -who is working herself to a new edition with commentary of the epyllion- will propose this text as the perfect training ground for young students of textual critic.

·      Please, note: the course will be held in italian. The lecturer will discuss some aspects of the subjec and/or some textual problems  in english, if necessary.

After a first part introducing the study of textual critic, manuscript tradition, ecdotical history, the course will focus on the special cases mentioned above. The most part of the lectures will be dedicated to the reading, translation and critical analysis of the anonymous text.

NB Other texts are meant to be read, translated and analyzed (see Texts/Bibliography). 

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aegritudo Perdicae

Recommended Bibliography:   L. Zurli, Aegritudo Perdicae, Leipzig 1987

(the Teubneriana is already available at the library of Balbi 4, please ask our librarian Mirko Cannistrà for info about it)

1) Ovid, Met., X

(text recommended: Ovidio. Metamorfosi, a cura di G. Rosati- C. Faranda Villa, Milano 1997)

2) Virgil, Aen., libro II

(text recommended: Virgilio, Eneide, trad. di M. Ramous, intr. di G. B. Conte, comm. di G.L. Baldo, Venezia, Marsilio, 2004)

3) Apuleio, Le Metamorfosi. Amore e Psiche (this text is meant to be read in English or in italian)

 (text recommended: Apuleio, Metamorfosi o L'asino d'oro, a cura di L. Nicolini, Bur, Milano 2005;

english edition: Apuleius, The Golden Ass, by P.G. Walsh, Cambridge 2008)

4) an introduction to textual critic to be chosen among:

-T. Braccini, La scienza dei testi antichi. Introduzione alla filologia classica, Firenze, 2017

- Sebastiano Timpanaro, La genesi del metodo del Lachmann, Torino, 2003