Doctoral Degree in Textual, Paleographical, Linguistic Studies

The Ph.D. Programme has at its core the written text analysed in its characteristics as a linguistic and literary product as well as a material object. Both the text and the material document(s) which preserve it are to be studied, as regards their format, materials, paleography, the history of their production, transmission and reading; and of course their textual aspect , metrics, rhetoric and the historical and cultural contexts of which each text is an expression. The five curricula cooperate for the study of such themes each according to specific aspects and to their individual aims and obiectives, as described below.
Common to all curricula is an approach which has at its centre the text studied through the appropriate methodologies: textual criticism, palaeography, bibliography, literary and textual theorization, codicology, rhetoric, metrics and narratology. The aim of the Ph.D. programme is to form competent scholars capable of pursuing their research in their chosen field. Specific aims of the individual curricula are as follows:

Palaeography, Mediaeval Philologies, Romance Languages and Literatures:
Ernesto Monaci and his school founded in Rome a new research methodology combining palaeography, Romance philology and linguistics, so that each discipline could elicit from the others a fundamental contribution for the progress of learning. It is a research methodology which has extended during the course of the last century to Medieval Latin and Modern languages and literatures.
Philology has as its object of study text transmission as well as the study of how cultural traditions are established and passed on. The relationship between history of written culture, and oral and written text transmission, be it for documentary or artistic purpose, becomes thus a single object of study to the historical understanding of which both the competence of palaeographers, linguists and scholars of literature can concur. More in general those of all scholars whose main scientific concern is the written or spoken word. .
In the history of Europe writing has had the formidable task of constituting the fundamental means for the composition, reading, transmission and preservation of texts. All written documents – books, documents, inscriptions – survive thanks to a material support. It follows that any critical approach to the study of texts cannot ignore either textual transmission, or, indeed, palaeography and the study of the book as a material object.
Our Ph.D programme constitutes a unicum on the international scene. It envisages that students – whatever their specific interest (Romance Philology, Medieval Latin, Palaeography, Modern Romance Literatures and Languages) acquire a sensitivity and specific competence on the relationship between different methodologies of textual analysis, palaeography and history of writing.
SETTORI  ERC:
SH5_2 Theory and history of literature, comparative literature
SH5_3 Philology and palaeography; historical linguistics 

English-language Literatures Curriculum:
The acquisition of up-to-date critical and exploratory skills that will allow candidates to pursue specialized researches in the fields of English language and literatures as well as in those cultural and disciplinary areas that are connected to them; the acquisition of competences a) in regards to the history and the periodization of literature, with a specific focus of the problems related to its main epochs, including the contemporary scene; b) the analysis of texts, developed in light of critical methodologies, with a special emphasis on those from the English-language world; c) the connection with theories of literature, and other literatures; d) the investigation of linguistic problems, approached both from a specifically communicative perspective and from a literary and non-literary point of view, on the basis of the instruments of contemporary stylistics and discourse analysis; e) the investigation of theories, methods, and approaches developed within Translation and Adaptation Studies, and especially those of the last 30 years; f) the study of theories, methods and approaches connected to the history of the English language, with specific focus on linguistics and historical pragmatics. 

Research areas that will be pursued are the following:

1) Medieval English Literature
2) Shakespeare and dramatic language
3) Forms and objects of modern literary discourse
4) Contemporary voices
5) American Studies
6) Post-colonial Literatures
7) Comparative studies, including studies on the relation between the Bible and literary discourse
8) Translation Studies and literary translation
9) Adaptation Studies
10) History of the English Language
11) Historicalpragmatics and stylistics 

Inter-Cultural and Easter European Studies (Slavic and Germanic Languages and Literatures):
The curriculum focuses on the research on language, literary and cultural processes of Central, Eastern and Southern Europe. These processes are understood as a complex system that regards cultural transitions such as: centre-periphery, majorities-minorities, hegemony-marginality, encounters-clashes, canons -anti canons, in the past and in the present. The study of the texts is grounded in a broad and dynamic perception of the cultural processes and, on the methodological and critical level, it benefits from the fruitful studies conducted over the last decades. The high-ranking tradition of European philological, critical and historical literary studies is combined with the exploration of texts and creative experiences in motion, together with the support of the expertise and the tools derived from the fields of inter-cultural, translation, and gender studies, as well as from cultural anthropology and linguistics. 

 

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