MEDIEVAL AND HUMANISTIC LATIN SCRIPTS AND TRADITION

The course is included in the interdisciplinary activities of the Bachelor's Degree Programme in Humanities and aims to provide students with a survey on medieval Latin literature, also through the reading and analysis of literary texts.
Course objectives are the following: ability to analyse a Latin medieval text and to put it in the right historical and cultural environment; enrichment and refinement of the knowledge of Latin medieval language and literature; to put students in contact with critical problems and methodologies of historical-literary research and of interpretation of texts, with the scientific bibliography and with the critical tools of literary and philological research.

1. Knowledge and understanding
- Knowledge of the main aspects of Latin Medieval Literature;
- theoretical and methodological knowledge of problems related to Latin Medieval Literature.

2. Ability to apply knowledge and understanding
- Ability to elaborate on the different aspects of Latin Medieval Literature in a critical way;
- ability to apply in an autonomous and critical way the theoretical and methodological knowledge acquired;
- ability to analyse a Latin medieval text and to put it in the right historical and cultural environment.

3. Judging skills
- Ability to deal with texts in a critical way, in order to evaluate different interpretations of a specific text and to formulate personal hypoteses.

4. Communication skills
- To know how to use with awareness an adequate and appropriately updated critical vocabulary.

5. Learning skills
- To be able to critically elaborate the bibliography relating to specific topics and discussions.

No prerequisites are required.

High school generally forgets the cultural and literary aspects of almost six hundred years of history, the period between the seventh and twelfth century, in which the written expression and, consequently, the communication of thought, was almost exclusively in Latin. The course therefore aims to fill, as far as possible, a cultural gap in the field of humanistic studies and wants to offer, through a survey on the most relevant aspects, the knowledge of some fundamental elements of medieval European culture, through the specific vehicle of literary expression. In particular:
1. Culture and school between IX and XV centuries. The medieval ages (carolingian, romanic, gotic, humanistic).
2. The languages of the Middle Ages. The tradition of the texts.
3. Literary genres in the Latin Middle Ages, between continuity and innovation.
4. The literature of the Latin Middle Ages - some relevant texts.

1. Notes, that will be available in teacher's page in Ca' Foscari website (Moodle).
2. Anthology of the texts which will be read in the classroom work, that will be available in teacher's page in Ca' Foscari website (Moodle).

For students who can't attend the lessons (which are invited to contact the teacher in order to talk about the preparation of the exam) is also compulsory the following volume:
E. D'ANGELO, Storia della letteratura mediolatina, Accademia Vivarium Novum, Montella 2004, pp. 23-73.

Suggested readings:
- E.R. CURTIUS, Letteratura europea e Medio Evo latino, trad. it., La Nuova Italia, Firenze 1992;
- Letteratura latina medievale (secoli VI-XV). Un manuale, a cura di C. Leonardi, SISMEL-Edizioni del Galluzzo, Firenze 2002;
- E. D'ANGELO, La letteratura latina medievale. Una storia per generi, Viella, Roma 2009;
- P. CHIESA, La letteratura latina del medioevo. Un profilo storico, Carocci, Roma 2017.

Written exam: usually 15 questions with short answers (which must ascertain knowledge of the topics covered by the course) and 3 with wider answers (with which the student must demonstrate that he has read the texts of the anthology and that she/he is able to comment on them): part A + B. Time: 2 hours. The final evaluation will come from the average of each mark which will be respectively attributed to each of the two parts (A and B).

Conventional: frontal lesson.

Italian

written