Unit LATIN LITERATURE
- Course
- Humanities
- Study-unit Code
- 35076206
- Curriculum
- Moderno
- Teacher
- Paola Paolucci
- Teachers
-
- Paola Paolucci
- Hours
- 36 ore - Paola Paolucci
- CFU
- 6
- Course Regulation
- Coorte 2020
- Offered
- 2021/22
- Learning activities
- Base
- Area
- Lingue e letterature classiche
- Academic discipline
- L-FIL-LET/04
- Type of study-unit
- Obbligatorio (Required)
- Type of learning activities
- Attività formativa monodisciplinare
- Language of instruction
- Italian
- Contents
- The course is divided into an institutional part and a monographic part. The first part will be aimed at providing a theoretical frame of reference concerning the historical design of Latin literature from its origins to the Late Ancient Age, with particular regard to the theory of literary genres and notions of method useful for the analysis of the Latin literary text. In particular, for the purpose of an appropriate framing of the monographic course, the literature of the first century AC will be deepened. The second part will be devoted to reading and commenting on some epigrams of Martial's fifth book.
- Reference texts
- For the history of Latin literature, the following manuals are recommended (but other manuals to be agreed with the teacher are also accepted): G. Garbarino, Letteratura latina (in three volumes or in one volume), ed. Paravia, various reprints; G. Picone - E. Romano - F. Gasti, Lezioni Romane (in 4 volumes), ed. Loescher, 2003; F. Stok - G. Abbamonte - S. Casali, Storia della letteratura latina, ed. La Scuola, 2005; G.B. Conte, Letteratura Latina, ed. Mondadori and Le Monnier, various reprints; M. Bettini, Cultura e letteratura a Roma, profilo storico e testi, Firenze, La Nuova Italia, 1999; G. Cipriani, Storia della letteratura latina, Foggia, Il Castello Edizioni, 2015, M. von Albrecht, Storia della letteratura latina, it. transl. by A. Setaioli, Einaudi 1995. For the monographic part the texts will be provided in pdf format in unistudium.
- Educational objectives
- The course represents the main opportunity in the three-year period of the classical curriculum to learn the entire historical design of Latin literature and to measure oneself with the methods of analyzing the literary text in the Latin language. It is a fundamental objective of the teaching to provide students with the bases and tools to face a cross-cutting literary theory discourse; therefore the main knowledge acquired must concern: 1. The knowledge of authors, works and epochs of Latin literature; 2. Knowledge of the salient characters of the main literary genres; 3. Knowledge of the foundations of the Latin literary system with regard to the literary object, the subjects of literary communication (literary community, author, publishing and public), the positioning of the text in time (transmission of the text) and in space (circulation of the text), with regard also to literary pragmatics; 4. Knowledge of the main elements of Latin versification. The main skill (that is the ability to apply the acquired knowledge) will be: Knowing how to read, translate, analyze and comment on a literary text in Latin, identifying the salient content elements and decoding the message.
- Prerequisites
- In order to understand and be able to autonomously reuse / elaborate the literary knowledge and concepts foreseen by the teaching, it is necessary to have a good linguistic-grammatical knowledge. The analysis of the texts, which will be examined during the course, also requires good translation skills from Latin to Italian. The possession of the knowledge and skills mentioned above is an indispensable prerequisite for the student who wants to follow the course profitably and who aspires to a concrete educational success.
- Teaching methods
- The prevailing didactic method foresees lectures in the classroom assisted, if necessary, by multimedia tools; practical exercises of metric reading, translation and textual analysis and digital humanities laboratories applied to Latin literature are also provided. In-depth seminars are also planned.
All this if it is compatible with the pandemic situation and the legislation in force from time to time. - Other information
- Students can acquire additional 3 credits (to be recognized among the 6 of further knowledge) by drawing up a written report on a topic related to the course agreed with the teacher. Credits will be recognized after positive evaluation of the report by the teacher.
The report must be a maximum of 10 pp. about 2000 characters; must use the bibliography critically and the text must be accompanied by notes. - Learning verification modality
- The evaluation will be achieved after passing an oral exam, with the aim of verifying the acquisition of knowledge related to the historical design of Latin literature from its origins to the late ancient age and of the theory of literary genres within the Latin literary system. The oral exam will also aim to verify the ability to read in metrics, translate, analyze and comment on a Latin literary text, chosen from among those covered by the monographic course, while verifying the real possession of linguistic knowledge of an adequate level. The timing of these oral assessments is governed by the calendar, approved by the Department Council. The duration of each single oral exam is quite considerable, since each evaluation includes the following phases: 1. Phase of literary knowledge verification through three open questions of history of literature and theory of literary genres; 2. Verification phase of textual analysis skills through metric reading, oral translation, analysis and comment of a text chosen in the context of the monographic topic deepened during the course.
- Extended program
- The course is divided into an institutional part and a monographic part. The first part will be aimed at providing a theoretical frame of reference concerning the historical design of Latin literature from its origins to the Late Ancient Age, with particular regard to the theory of literary genres and notions of method useful for the analysis of the Latin literary text. The second part will be devoted to the epigrammatic production by Martial with specific attention to the epigrams of the fifth book.
In addition to the short poetic genres, the genres of epithalamium and epyllion will be considered. Aspects relating to the manuscript tradition and the constitution of the text of Catullus will also be evaluated.