CLASSIC JAPANESE LANGUAGE 1

This is one of the characterizing subjects within the "Japan" curriculum of the graduate course in "Lingue e Culture dell'Asia e dell'Africa Mediterranea".
The course contributes to the attainment of the teaching goals of the graduate course in the area of language skills and includes also the more specific goals of the cultural and humanities areas.
The course aims at the comprehension of the basic structures of kanbun kundoku through the analysis of primary sources written in kanbun. This will allow a widening and a deepening of the knowledge of the Japanese literature written in Chinese that occupies a relevant place within Japanese classical lietrature. Moreover the students will understand the changes occurred in the Japanese language after its encounter with the Chinese language.

Knowledge and understanding:
- to know and understand the basic structure of kanbun kundoku reading system
- to know useful tools to conduct independently bibliographic research
-to know and understand the changes occurred in the Japanese language after its encounter with the Chinese language.
-to deepen the knowledge of the Japanese historical texts written in Chinese that occupies a relevant place within Japanese classical literature.

Applying knowledge and understanding:
- to analyze and Japanese historical texts written in Chinese by using concepts and tools which the students aquire in this course.
- to use bibliographic references in different languages (included Japanese)
- to conduct new and interdisciplinary researches

Making judgements:
- to produce critical judgments on the textual and historical-literary phenomena that are part of the program
- to subject various types of sources (academic and creative texts) to critically analize.

Communication:
- to express one's opinion in an effective way
- to re-elaborate and express in an effective way the opinions of other people

Lifelong learning skills:
- to know how to conduct bibliographic research
- to know how to critically integrate the study of different materials (notes, slides, manuals, creative texts, academic articles)
- to be able to read and re-elaborate in a synthetic way materials written in different languages

Advanced knowledge of the Japanese modern language and good knowledge of Classical Japanese grammar.

This course aims at providing students with the basic knowledge of kanbun, its grammatical rules, conversion techniques, and linguistic and literary characteristics. By the end of the course, students are expected to have skills of reading essential basic kanbun texts composed both in China and Japan.
In traditional Japan from the 3rd through the late 19th centuries, classical Chinese—written with Chinese characters—was the language of choice in official and literary communication. At the same time, the Japanese developed a special reading method to mentally punctuate, analyze, and translate classical Chinese (kanbun) texts into classical Japanese. Therefore, kanbun reading is an necessary skills for all the students in Japanese studies, who deal with almost every aspect until the late 19th centuries.
However, the Japanese use of classical Chinese was not (from a Chinese point of view) entirely pure. It also developed an additional idiom of its own that, while still looking like classical Chinese, incorporated elements of classical Japanese syntax, style, and lexicon. This popular—and somehow second-class—idiom of “Japanese kanbun” showed a great variety of irregular styles that often lacked a systematic grammar. As a result, Japanese kanbun is often exceedingly difficult to read and therefore hardly offered anywhere outside of Japan.

Various handouts, for which there will be photocopied or made downloadable from the "Materiali didattici" of Keiko Ono around mid-September.

Written quizzes and exam which includes analyzing and translating texts covered in the lessons.

Interactive Lectures with Japanese historical texts written in Chinese.

English

First class of the semester is Thursday, September the 20th. There is no class on the first week, which will be made-up later.

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