Teaching code

4S01893

Teacher

Paolo Scattolin

Coordinatore

Paolo Scattolin

Credits

6

Also offered in courses

• Bachelor's degree in Philosophy
• Bachelor’s degree in Cultural Heritage

Language

Italian

Scientific Disciplinary Sector (SSD)

L-FIL-LET/02 - GREEK LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

Period

1 A, 1 B

Lessons timetable Moodle Seminars

Learning objectives

The course aims to provide Students with an adequate understanding of the literary institutions of ancient Greece, analyzed in terms both of their history and their structures and placed within the major framework of European cultural tradition. Students will be guided in reading ancient Greek texts – or selections thereof – in the original language. The course will focus on, but will not be limited to, texts from the Archaic and Classical periods. At the end of the course Students will - know the main textual typologies of Greek Literature; - have an adequate knowledge of the history, development, and authors of Greek Literature up to the classical period; - be able to place, in terms both of chronology and literary history, metre, and language, the texts under scrutiny; - be able to introduce and explain in their own words and with appropriate language the texts that the course focuses on; - be able to translate and comment upon both the texts analyzed in class and others forming part of the programme.

Prerequisites and basic notions

Good knowledge of ancient Greek is required.

Program

INVENTING THE BARBARIAN: READING AESCHYLUS' 'PERSIANS'.
(1) Greek tragedy, well before the other poetic genres and on the same level as Herodotus, witnesses Athenian society's reflection on the figure of the 'barbarian' in the period when, after the Persian Wars, Athens is on its way to becoming an imperialist power. The course aims at analyzing Aeschylus' Persians (472 BCE), the first drama devoted to what Edith Hall has called 'the invention of the barbarian,' a construction that has to do not so much with a biologically grounded (and therefore 'racist') doctrine of the superiority of the Greeks as with an ethnocentric vision and a deep-rooted consciousness of the Greeks's 'cultural' superiority.
The critical reference edition will be that of Martin L. West in the series «Bibliotheca Scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana» (Stuttgart 1991).
The purchase of an annotated edition of the 'Persians' with facing translation is recommended (e.g., example the Feltrinelli edited by Monica Centanni (https://tinyurl.com/f98zfrfh), Franco Ferrari's BUR (https://tinyurl.com/37ncnrn6) or the Oscar Mondadori edited by Giorgio Ieranò (https://tinyurl.com/3m3sjx5h).
(2) students will independently prepare (a) a translation and grammatical commentary of Homer, Iliad 22 on the 'Teubnerian' text by Martin L. West (München-Leipzig 2000). For this purpose they may make use of any commercially available annotated edition; (b) Jacqueline De Romilly's «Compendio di letteratura greca» (Zanichelli 1987) from the Archaic period up to and including Hellenism.
NB: The text of the critical editions and other useful materials will be provided by the lecturer via the Moodle platform.

Bibliography

Didactic methods

(1) teaching will be delivered in-presence with recordings available on the Moodle platform for a period of no less than one month; (2) non-attending students must agree on an alternative program; (3) attending the workshop on Greek metre (12 hours) that will be activated starting in October is strongly recommended.

Learning assessment procedures

The examination is oral for attending and non-attending students and includes (a) translation of one or more excerpts from the texts covered in class and from Iliad 22; (b) commentary on the same passages from a literary-historical, linguistic, metrical point of view; (c) one question on De Romilly's book with regard to the Archaic, Classical, post-Classical and Hellenistic periods.
The duration of the oral examination is approximately one hour.

Evaluation criteria

The examination will aim to assess:
(1) the ability to translate the texts on the syllabus;
(2) awareness of the translation choices adopted and the linguistic-stylistic specificities of the texts;
(3) the ability to reflect critically on these texts within the framework of the literary genres of reference;
(4) knowledge of the history of Greek literature of the archaic, classical, post-classical and Hellenistic periods.

Criteria for the composition of the final grade

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Exam language

italiano ed eventualmente inglese per gli studenti Erasmus.