IRANIAN PHILOLOGY

The course is to be understood primarily as a necessary completion of the training of the students who have chosen to study Persian language and cultura, through a detailed philological analysis of the historical-linguistic and textual phenomena; it integrates itself, moreover, among the various linguistic courses provided in the West Asian and South Asian curriculums of the LICSAAM project, allowing the students to widen the spectrum of their philological skills to the area of Iranian languages. The historical-linguistic approach and the interest for the pre-islamic period covers an often under-represented context and converses with both the historical-religious courses relevant to the Iranian world (but also Indian and Semitic) and with the literary ones dealing with the same contexts.

The course has two main goals: 1) providing a historical and philological picture of the Iranian languages, with a special attention to the history of the New Persian language; 2) introducing the students to textual analysis of pre-modern Persian literary sources.

We recommend at least a basic knowledge of written Persian

We will briefly introduce the definition and the history of the philological forms of knowledge. We will subsequently describe the he main themes of the linguistic and philological research in the Iranian world, focusing on the history and the geography of the Iranian languages with a special attention to the New Persian language and its varieties, with analytical readings of pre-modern literary and technical (i.e. lexicographic and grammatical) texts.

1 - Iran and philology: main themes, history of the discipline and post-modern perspectives

2 - Old Iranian (Avestan and Old Persian)

3 - Middle Iranian (Parthian, Sogdian, Coresmian, Bactrian, Khotanese)

4 - Middle Iranian (Middle Persian)

5 - New Iranian (Kurdish and Balochi)

6 - New Iranian (Pashto, Yaghnobi, Ossetian, Pamir languages)

7 - New Persian: history and varieties (formation and diffusion of New Persian)

8 - New Persian: shistory and varieties (Dari and Tojik)

9 - New Persian: history and varieties ("Iranian" and "colonial" Persian)

10 - Lexicography and grammar in Persian (rhyme theory, Shams-i Qays, Tusi)

11 - Lexicography and grammar in Persian (dictionaries until 1500)

12 - Lexicography and grammar in Persian (Mughal dictionaries and 17th c. grammars)

13 - Lexicography and grammar in Persian (Arzu and Indian Persian)

14 - Lexicography and grammar in Persian (Qatil and the varieties of Persian)

15 - Lexicography and grammar in Persian (Habib Esfahani and linguistic nationalism)

I.M. Oranskij, Le lingue Iraniche, ed. it. a cura di A.V. Rossi, Napoli 1973.

N. Sims-Williams, "Le lingue iraniche", in Le lingue indeuropee, a cura di A. Giacalone Ramat e P. Ramat, Bologna 1993, pp. 151-179.

G. Windfuhr (ed.), "The Iranian Languages", London & New York, 2009

Lazard, "La formation de la langue persane", Paris, 1995.

Further bibliography will be provided at the beginning of the course

Written test and critical discussion with the instructor

Traditional, with the support of multimedia tools (powerpoint, etc.)

Italian

written and oral