Classical Tradition

Recommended Prerequisites

Graduation in Arts and Humanities. Some knowledge in Roman and Greek literatures.

Teaching Methods

Students shall be assessed continuously. The assessment process encompasses the following elements:

a) online participation in the e-learning platform;

b) participation in the discussions and presentation of short analyses during the face-to-face sessions;

c) final research paper, under the supervision of the seminar teacher.

Learning Outcomes

The main goal of this course is to provide the students with an overview of the literary production inherited from the Greco-Roman Classical literature, throughout the centuries. Therefore, the student must:

- know how to analise the presence of Classical Culture under several forms of expression in occidental culture throughout the centuries.

-be prepared for a critical reading of this kind of recreations / rewritings of classical subjects and literary genres of classical origin and to be able to distinguish them from new themes and genres that emerged;

- know how to identify the literary codes of the authors of the Middle Ages and Renaissance;

- know the most relevant literary genres deriving from the work of latin and vernacular authors of later centuries;

- understand the literary pragmatics of those works and should know how to appreciate the aesthetics of the literary production during those periods, in their religious, political and social context.

Work Placement(s)

No

Syllabus

1- The sense of ‘traditio’. Cultural memory and identity. Tradition and criticism. Tradition and crisis.

2- ‘Traditio’ and originality, ‘traductio’ and ‘translatio’, and the appropriation of poetics in antiquity.

3- Concepts of ‘mimesis’/’imitatio’, ‘zelosis’/’aemulatio’ and (re)writing.

4- Contribution of Classical and Judeo-Christian inheritance to the formation of Western identity.

5- Literary tradition. Literary genres and literary pragmatics.

6- Literary evolution and innovation in Latin and vernacular authors.

Assessment Methods

Assessment
Research work: 40.0%
Synthesis work: 60.0%

Bibliography

As Humanidades Greco-Latinas e a Civilização do Universal – Actas. Coimbra, 1988.

Brunhölzl, Franz. Histoire de la Littérature Latine du Moyen Âge. 3 vols, Louvain-la-Neuve, 1990-96.

Buck, August. L’eredità clássica nelle letterature neolatine del Rinascimento, Brescia, 1980.

Curtius, Ernst Robert, Literatura Europeia e Idade Média Latina. São Paulo, 1996.

Highet, G., The classical tradition. Greek and Roman influences on Western literature, OUP, 2015.

Jaeger, W., Cristianismo Primitivo e Paideia Grega, Edições 70, 2001, trad. Ingl. Early Christianity and Paideia, 1965.

Latineuropa: latim e cultura neolatina no processo de construção da identidade europeia. Coimbra, 2008.

Legado Clássico no Renascimento e sua recepção. Contributos para a renovação do espaço cultural europeu. Coimbra IUC, 2017.

Pereira, M.H. Rocha, Novos ensaios sobre temas clássicos na poesia portuguesa, Lisboa, 1982

Ramalho, A.C., Para a História do Humanismo em Portugal. 5 vols. Coimbra-Lisboa, 1988-2013.