Admission requirements
This course is open to Master and Research Master students in Classics and Ancient Civilisations (track Classics or other tracks – but a fluent command of Latin is a prerequisite to follow the course), as well as Research Master and PhD students associated with OIKOS.
Description
‘This is an exciting time for the study of neo-Latin literature’. With this statement Victoria Moul opened her introduction to the recently published A Guide to Neo-Latin literature (Cambridge, 2017). The main reason for this excitement is that in the last five years no less than three reference works for the study of Neo-Latin have been published, the other two being Brill’s Encyclopaedia of the Neo-Latin World (Leiden/Boston, 2014) and the Oxford Handbook to Neo-Latin (Oxford, 2015). The almost simultaneous publication of these works signals, in the words of Craig Kallendorf, ‘a new maturity for Neo-Latin studies’, meaning that they have become more and more aligned with adjacent disciplines, and are more and more concerned with methodological issues. This seminar will take this ‘new maturity for Neo-Latin studies’ as point of departure and aims at understanding the role of neo-Latin texts in their wider literary and historical context. In so doing it will specifically focus on three characteristic features that are notorious for Neo-Latin research: canonization (of ancient authors, genres etc.), the relationship of Neo-Latin texts to social and political occasions, and the complex interconnections with both classical and contemporary literature.
The topic of this years’ seminar will be the development of epigrammatic and elegiac poetry in the 15th and early 16th century. The first few sessions will be dedicated to reminding the participants of te major ancient authors and generic developments (Catullus, the Augustan elegists, Martial, Carmina Priapea, the Anthologia Latina). The major part of the seminar will then be dedicated to the early modern poets, among them Antonio Beccadelli, Cristoforo Landino, Tito Vespasiano Strozzi, Basinio da Parma, Giovanni Pontano, Michele Marullo, Janus Secundus, and Conrad Celtis. Participants will be invited to suggest authors/themes for the final sessions. Major question we will try to answer are: how did these poets see their works within a poetics of imitation and emulation of te ancients? Which role did intrertextuality with verbacular poetry play? What are the societal and economic frameworks within which such poetry could exist; especially what was the role of literary patronage? How innovative could such poetry be? How successful was it among contemporaries and in later generations?
Course objectives
Knowledge & Insight:
Broadening the knowledge of Neo-Latin literature;
Broadening the knowledge of research tools for Neo-Latin literature;
Deepening insight in modern interdisciplinary approaches;
Critical awareness of the importance of the heritage of the Roman world in (early) modern Europe, and of its appropriation in different political and cultural contexts;
Reflecting on discussions of government and rulership led via exemplary figures.
Skills:
Enlarging reading and analytic/interpretative competence of Neo-Latin texts;
Developping research skills in a relatively unfamiliar field (research) and enhancing mindset for academic research;
Enhancing presentation skills;
Enhancing writing skills.
Timetable
The timetables are available through My Timetable.
Mode of instruction
Seminar
Assessment method
Assessment
Written exam (mostly translation with few questions about the content of the classes)
Oral presentation, with full handout
Paper (max. 4500 words)
The requirements for MA and ResMA students are differentiated: ResMA students are expected to come up with their own original research topic, find literature etc.; one-year MA students may expect more help in choosing their texts and finding literature, and their papers may lean more heavily on existing scholarship on the given text.
Weighing
Written exam: 30 %
Oral presentation: 30 %
Paper: 40 %
(ii) additional requirements.
All parts must be sufficient (5.5 at the lowest). Furthermore, Note that for this course presence and active participation are a requirement. This means that students are required to attend the classes, to be fully prepared and to join the discussions; students who are absent from more than two session without valid reason will be excluded from the examination.
Resit
There is the possibility for a resit of all parts (in case of a resit of the oral presentation, the exact form has to be agreed upon with the lecturer – it might be a presentation without fellow students, with only the lecturer being present).
Inspection and feedback
How and when an exam review will take place will be disclosed together with the publication of the exam results at the latest. If a student requests a review within 30 days after publication of the exam results, an exam review will have to be organized.
Reading list
Relevant literature for the sessions will be made available via Brightspace.
The following titles might be useful for a first orientation in the field of Neo-Latin (no need to buy them):
Bloemendal, Jan, Philip Ford and Charles Fantazzi (eds.). Brill’s Companion to the Neo-Latin world. 2 vols. (Leiden/Boston, 2014)
Kallendorf, Craig. “Recent Trends in Neo-Latin Studies. A Review Essay.” Renaissance Quarterly 69 (2016): 617–29.
Knight, Sarah, and Stefan Tilg (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Neo-Latin (Oxford, 2015)
Moul, Victoria (ed.). A Guide to Neo-Latin Literature (Cambridge, 2017)
IJsewijn, Jozef and Dirk Sacré. Companion to Neo-Latin Studies. 2 vols. (Leuven, 1990-98)
Especially the chapters on Elegy/Epigram in Knight/Tilg, Moul and Fantazzi et al will be a good first overview.
A good and concise overview of the genre rules of the Neo-Latin epigram is the introduction of:
de Beer, Susanna, Karl Enenkel and David Rijser (eds.). The Neo-Latin Epigram. A Learned and Witty Genre (Leuven, 2009).
At the beginning of the class, necessary research tools and handbooks will be presented for those participants who have no experience with Neo-Latin literature yet.
Registration
Enrolment through MyStudyMap is mandatory.
General information about course and exam enrolment is available on the website.
Registration À la carte education, Contract teaching and Exchange
Information for those interested in taking this course in context of À la carte education (without taking examinations), eg. about costs, registration and conditions.
Information for those interested in taking this course in context of Contract teaching (with taking examinations), eg. about costs, registration and conditions.
For the registration of exchange students contact Humanities International Office.
Contact
For substantive questions, contact the lecturer listed in the right information bar.
For questions about enrolment, admission, etc, contact the Education Administration Office: Arsenaal
Remarks
For this course, presence and active participation are mandatory (see above).
Students who want to suggest texts or themes to be included in the course are invited to contact the teacher before the start of the course.