Farcical Philology: Alexander Shewan\u27s Homeric Games at an Ancient St. Andrews

It is one of the many ironies of the term philology that what to the untrained ear may connote a dry and lifeless field of study was once the fightingest of fighting words; indeed, philology has been only recently retired as a field with an especial love for internecine warfare. Love of literature, it seems, could spawn loathing of fellow literature-lovers, and as philology grew as a discipline and even academic profession, the stakes were high. Any examination of metaphilology, then, must include a glance at philology\u27s discourses of error and detection, of correction and humiliation: philology- if dedicated to recovering a singular truth concerning texts--can be a zero-sum game. In the field of classical studies, questions of literary interpretation have necessarily been wedded to such texts\u27 often shadowy social contexts, and it is no coincidence that the most bitter battles have been fought where there is the least available evidence. The greater the evidential void, the greater the opportunity for hermeneutic ingenuity--and for equally pitched polemic

Did Philologists write the Iliad? : Friedrich August Wolf's criteria of style and the demonstrative power of citation

Friedrich August Wolf posits in his "Prolegomena ad Homerum" that, from the time of the first transcription of Homer's epics around 700 BC to the time of the Alexandrian editions, the Iliad and Odyssey underwent repeated revisions by a multitude of poets and critics. According to Wolf, the "unified" works that we know are the products of emendations by Alexandrian critics who attempted to homogenize the style of the epics and to return them to their "original" form. This paper argues that Wolf's narration of the history of these texts relies on and produces aesthetic claims, not historical ones. Wolf determines the dates and origins of passages based on intuitive judgments of style for which he cannot provide linguistic or historical evidence. And his conclusions that the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" were not written by Homer, but rather by a history of emendations and revisions, enthrones his work — the work of philologists — in place of the literary genius Homer. Thus philology becomes for Wolf an aesthetic discipline that produces canonical and beautiful works of literature. This aesthetic task is essential for philology to fulfill its educational and political responsibilities

"The Milk of Birds": A Proverbial Phrase, Ancient and Modern, and its Link to Nature

A curious phrase from ancient Greek, ὀρνίθων γάλα, finds parallels in Latin as lac gallinaceum and in Modern Greek, as και του πουλιού το γάλα. While the Greek phrases translate as "(and) the milk of (the) bird(s)", the Latin translates as "henʼs milk". This essay discusses the phrase in a select variety of Greek and Latin sources from the 5th century BCE to the 4th century CE, and its Modern Greek equivalent in the 21st century. In addition, it discusses the variety of meanings and uses found in those sources, and connections to the natural world. Information from ancient sources has been gleaned from a search of the Digital Loeb Classical Library online database. Information for modern use comes from informal interviews, Facebook messages, e-mails, and telephone messages of nine native speakers of Modern Greek from different parts of the Greek world, most of whom live in the United States. The essay discusses two points concerning the natural world: first, the phrase as found in the names of certain plants, and second, as a substance called crop-milk produced by members of the pigeon family. The linguistic connection between ancient and modern worlds and the parallels found in nature encourage scholars to look "outside the box" when investigating proverbs, proverbial expressions and proverbial phrases. The Modern Greek version of the phrase both confirms and expands the meanings of the ancient ones, thus suggesting that other connections between these ancient and modern languages may prove to be fruitful avenues of investigation.

Manners and method in classical criticism of the early eighteenth century

This article explores a neglected period in the history of classical scholarship: the first decades of the eighteenth century. It focuses on the tension between an evolving idea of method, and the tradition of personal polemic which had been an important part of the culture of scholarship since the Renaissance. There are two case studies: the conflict between Jean Le Clerc and Pieter Burman, and the controversy that followed Richard Bentley's edition of Horace's Odes. Both demonstrate the need to revise current paradigms for writing the history of scholarship, and invite us to reconsider the role of methodology in producing of scholarly authority

Patrick Curry interview with Tom Shippey

Patrick Curry interview with Tom Shippey in November 201

Del present imperfecte i dels futurs de probabilitat, o entorn de la filologia, la lingüística, l'anàlisi crítica del discurs i les ciències de la comunicació

What is the aim today of talking about philology, either in absolute terms or related to other concepts such as linguistics or language sciences? On the one hand, it seems unfair to resort to metaphors that pair (traditional) philology and (textual) necrophilia. On the other hand, turning our back on the reality is not the appropriate response to current problems: a more applied training (in the professional field) is needed, and (in the scientific context) the frontiers should be pushed back, because the old ones are obsolete and in need of reappraisal. Faced with a past and a present that are inevitably imperfect, this article is a reflection on the chances of a future in which philology (in the classical sense) is accompanied by language and communication sciences. The reason for this situation and for this specific proposal is not simply to follow the fashion or to embrace modernity, as the winner of the debate with antiquity: the aim is to try to provide a fuller professional training (a less erudite one) and a more interdisciplinary, less localist area of study. The context of the article is provided by comment on a brief series of sociopolitical and cultural events in our setting, all of them previous to the elections to the Parliament of Catalonia in November 2006. Any analysis of events of this kind, even the most superficial, shows that philologists or linguists should not undervalue a critical competence which, in its turn, should be transmitted to students as one of the skills involved in the processes of teaching, learning and knowledge transfer. Instead of limiting itself to the fields of grammar and history of literature, an imaginative (not imaginary) philology need to be open to criticism and communication. If the natural epistemological context of philology (of any philology) is also that of communication, we should not object to the efforts to strengthen the lines of convergence rather than divergence and contrast. Can a philology without communication produce anything but unemployable professionals? A clever (indirect) answer: although we may only be a fully-fledged nation in the preamble (not in the text) we should try hard to rescue our philology from the twilight zone

Making Latin Concrete: Strategies for Teaching Latin Through Material Culture

We decided to address the issue of incorporating archaeology and material culture into classes devoted to Latin literature last spring, while Patrick was teaching Latin and Lynne was teaching Roman Civilization. Both of us were confronted with the danger of losing the interest of students who once had a burning desire to learn about the ancient world. Our aim is to offer up some suggestions for ways that, through collaboration between specialists in philology, history, and archaeology, we can keep the Classical world dynamic and relevant

GRK 26: Herodotus and Thucydides

Syllabus and bibliography for an advanced Greek seminar taught at Dartmouth in Winter 201

Класична філологія і літературознавство

The classical philology is the oldest philological discipline. It has been always dealing with the texts written in classical languages. But its object has been various: through the text the classical philology studied a history, a culture, a philosophy, a language, and a literature. Although the classical philology is essentially a text-oriented discipline, the immanent approach to the literary text is not characteristic for it. The immanent approaches usually have been developed in the modern philologies – where the language is not to be overcome, realia are not to be commented, and the extratextual situation is not to be reconstructed. Therefore the methods of the modern literary criticism in general are rarely applied to the ancient literature the thing is that it is the classical philology that inevitably has monopoly on the professional studies in the field of the ancient literature that hardly can be studied on a professional level without a good command of the classical languages and without the scholar being included in the classical tradition. So it seems to be important to establish the cooperation between the classical philology and the literary criticism proper. It may open not only the ancient text for the modern approaches, but also the classical approaches for the modern texts.Рассматривается классическая филология – древнейшая филологическая дисциплина. Акцентируется, что, несмотря на принципиальную текстоцентричность, классической филологии обычно чужд имманентный подход к художественному тексту. Имманентные подходы развивались в новых филологиях, где язык не приходится преодолевать, реалии – комментрировать, а внетекстовую ситуацию – реконструировать. Поэтому к античной литературе современные методы в общем применяются нечасто, поскольку в профессиональном изучении античной литературы неминуема монополия классической филологии: без знания языка и включенности в классическофилологическую традицию такое изучение просто невозможно. Сделан вывод о важности налаживания коммуникации классической филологии и собственно литературоведения, что открыло бы не только древние тексты для новых методов, но и классические методы для новых текстов.Розглядається класична філологія – найдревніша з філологічних дисциплін. Акцентовано, що попри засадничу текстоцентричність, класичній філології переважно не властивий іманентний підхід до художнього тексту. Іманентні підходи розвивалися в нових філологіях, де мову не треба долати, реалії – коментувати, а позатекстову ситуацію – реконструювати. Тому до античної літератури новіші методи взагалі застосовуються нечасто, адже у фаховому вивченні античної літератури неминуча монополія класичної філології: професійні студії тут просто неможливі без знання мови і включеності в класичнофілологічну традицію. Зроблений висновок про важливість налагодження комунікації класичної філології і власне літературознавства, що відкрило б не лише старі тексти для нових методів, а й класичні методи для нових текстів