Greek Palaeography and Textual Criticism (CL0192)

? Credit Points : 20 ? SCQF Level : 11 ? Acronym : HCA-P-CL0192

The classical texts we use today are the product not simply of their original authors' genius but of the painstaking labours of generations of copyists and of editors both ancient and modern. Just as stories may lose or gain as they are repeated from one person to another, so texts transmitted from antiquity may be changed, accidentally or deliberately, as they are copied and recopied. Mistakes inevitably occurred that might eventually cast doubt on the original text or even displace it altogether. The task of the palaeographer is to learn how to read ancient manuscripts and to determine what they say, of the textual critic to decide, on the basis of these and any other available evidence, what the author actually wrote. The purpose of this course is to introduce students to examples of various types of scripts from different periods, to illustrate and explain some of the difficulties that may be encountered in reading them and to offer practice in their transcription and interpretation. Some of the resources that may be drawn on by editors in restoring readings will be examined in a detailed study of the opening lines of Euripides' 'Iphigenia in Tauris'. By these means students will be able to make intelligent, practical use of an apparatus criticus and to exercise independent judgement in their evaluation of readings.

Entry Requirements

? Pre-requisites : PGs Only

Subject Areas

Home subject area

Postgraduate (School of History and Classics), (School of History, Classics and Archaeology, Schedule E)

Delivery Information

? Normal year taken : Postgraduate

? Delivery Period : Not being delivered

? Contact Teaching Time : 2 hour(s) per week for 10 weeks

Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of the course students will have:-
- learned to recognise and transcribe a number of different types of Greek script;
- gained practice in identifying and accounting for manuscript errors;
- learned how to determine the relationship between manuscripts in constructing a stemma;
- had an opportunity to collate a portion of manuscript against a printed text;
- learned how to interpret and use the information given in a critical edition;
- learned how to establish a text and construct an apparatus criticus.