ROMANCE PHILOLOGY
Academic year and teacher
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- Versione italiana
- Academic year
- 2022/2023
- Teacher
- GIUSEPPE MASCHERPA
- Credits
- 12
- Curriculum
- LETTERATURA, LINGUA, STORIA E SPETTACOLO
- Didactic period
- Secondo Semestre
- SSD
- L-FIL-LET/09
Training objectives
- The aim of the course is to introduce students to the complexity of the linguistic and literary landscape of medieval Romance Europe, through the illustration of some fundamental concepts and the annotated reading of some literary and documentary texts. It is desirable that students, faced with a Romance medieval text, become able to interpret and contextualise it, employing in a coordinated manner the methods of different disciplines: history tout court, textual and material philology, historical and comparative linguistics, linguistic geography and literary criticism.
Prerequisites
- A basic knowledge of Latin will be helpful in understanding the content of the first part of the course.
Course programme
- The course will be divided into three parts.
(a) - Fundamentals of Romance Linguistics.
The framework of the historical and cultural context in which the transition from Latin unity to Neo-Latin fragmentation took place will be followed by a deepening of phonological, morphological, syntactic and lexical changes that occurred in the transition from Latin to the Romance languages.
(b) - The oldest Romance texts.
The oldest documentary and literary evidence of the Romance languages (9th-11th centuries) will be read, translated, contextualised and linguistically commented.
(c) - Profile of medieval Romance literatures.
An outline of early Romance literatures (up to the 13th century) will be traced through the reading, translation and commentary of texts pertaining to various literary genres: epic poetry, lyric poetry, novel, short narrative, hagiography. We will explore the characteristics of the literary genres and their reciprocal influence, the dynamics of circulation and reception of texts within the medieval Romance world, and the history of the manuscript tradition. Didactic methods
- Face-to-face lectures.
No live video or video recordings of lectures will be available, unless the public health emergency status is restored. Learning assessment procedures
- The exam will be a 2 hours written test on all the coursework.
The written test will contain both open and closed questions, lists of linguistic phenomena (especially the phonetic and morphological ones) to be completed, excerpts from texts read in class to be translated and commented, and blank maps to be filled in.
The results of the tests will be published anonymously in the Classroom (code yapug75) after a few days.
Students who have obtained a mark between 18 and 30 in the written test may ask to take an additional oral exam to improve their grade. Reference texts
- For part (a) of the course:
- Lorenzo Renzi, Alvise Andreose, "Manuale di linguistica e filologia romanza", Bologna, il Mulino, 2015 (or previous editions): introduction and chapters 1 ("Il dominio romanzo"), 2 ("Il paradigma classico"), 3 ("Il paradigma storico"), 5 ("Variazione sociale e geografica"), 10 ("L'edizione dei testi");
- Laura Minervini, "Filologia romanza. 2. Linguistica", Firenze, Le Monnier Università, 2021:
chapters 2 ("Il latino e la genesi delle lingue romanze"), 5 ("Elementi di grammatica storica: fonologia"), 6 ("Elementi di grammatica storica: morfologia e sintassi"), 7 ("Il lessico delle lingue romanze").
For part (b):
- Laura Minervini, "Filologia romanza. 2. Linguistica", Firenze, Le Monnier Università, 2021: chapter 3 ("I più antichi testi romanzi");
- Maria Luisa Meneghetti, "Le origini delle letterature medievali romanze", Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2012 (or previous editions): chapters 1 ("Introduzione"), 2 ("La cultura occidentale dal tramonto dell'impero romano alla fine dell'età merovingia [secoli V-VIII]"), 4 ("Le più antiche testimonianze del volgare in area iberica", excluding § 4. 5), 5 ("Le più antiche testimonianze del volgare in area francese"), 6 ("Le più antiche testimonianze del volgare in area italiana").
For part (c):
- Pietro G. Beltrami, "La filologia romanza", Bologna, il Mulino, 2017: part three ("La letteratura del Medioevo romanzo"), chapters 1 ("Dalle origini a Wace"), 2 ("Dai primi trovatori ai romanzi in prosa"), 3 ("Dal Cid ad Alfonso X"), 4 ("Verso Dante e oltre"), 5 ("Oralità e scrittura"), 6 ("Questioni di cultura").
Non-attending students are asked to contact the professor.
