Modern humanities

ANNA TERESA PAOLA RADAELLI
ANNA TERESA PAOLA RADAELLI

The main goal is to give to the students a deeper knowledge of romance languages and literatures in the Middle Ages and of the philological method, through the study of exemplary authors and/or textes and/or themes and the critical enquiry of pertinent scientific literature. Students will develop new critical skills in the analysis of texts through their formal characters and the comparison between related objects, acquiring better skills of contrastive analysis on texts, forms, genres, thematic clusters.

The class aims the acquisition of critical skills and the awareness of epistemological and methodological concerns about the issues that play a key role in Romance Philology; it involves the knowledge of the cultural context of Romance languages addressed in different fields of enquiry: historical linguistics, textual criticism, and medieval literatures.
The student will need to demonstrate having acquired the scientific bibliography and philological method, as well as linguistic knowledge within the Romance domain.

No prior knowledge is required.

Occitan albas. Themes, contexts, linguistic and formal issues of medieval monophonic songs of twelfth and thirteenth centuries: the albas in occitan language. With an outline of the phonology and morphology of Old Provençal and an inquiry into the interaction between melodic and poetic structures, primarily focused on some of surviving old Provençal dawn songs.

Reference Edition:
• Gérard GOUIRAN, «Et ades sera l’alba». Angoisse de l’aube. Recueil des chansons d’aube des troubadours, Montpellier, Publications de l’Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier-III (« Lo gat ros »), 2005.
• Christophe CHAGUINIAN, Les Albas occitanes, étude et édition par transcription musicale et étude des mélodies par J. Haines, Paris, Champion, 2008.


In addition to the reference edition mentioned above, students will also need to utilize the support of the following studies:
• Dietmar RIEGER, La posizione dell’alba nella lirica trobadorica, in La lirica, a cura di L. Formisano, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1990, p. 157-169.
• Lucia LAZZERINI, Letteratura medievale in lingua d’oc, Modena, Mucchi, 2010.
• Aurelio RONCAGLIA, La lingua dei trovatori. Profilo di grammatica storica del provenzale antico, Roma, Edizioni dell'Ateneo 1965 and reprints.

Additional reading of contributions in hard copy or digital format that will be made available during the course is also required.
In the online folder dedicated to the course, dictionaries, grammars, and useful materials for exam preparation will also be available.

Conventional frontal lectures.

Attendance not mandatory but strongly recommended.

To pass the exam, the candidates must demonstrate the acquisition of in-depth expertise about key-problems of Romance philology and arguments of the Medieval Literatures of Romance languages including historical linguistics and textual criticism.

Reading and commenting on texts that are representative of Western cultures and romance languages of the Middle Ages.