SPANISH LITERATURE II
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- Versione italiana
- Academic year
- 2022/2023
- Teacher
- PAOLO TANGANELLI
- Credits
- 6
- Didactic period
- Primo Semestre
- SSD
- L-LIN/05
Training objectives
- The course intends to explain basic concepts about text editing, studying the transmission of SAN JUAN DE LA CRUZ’s treatises. Students will learn to critically analyze texts that are characterized by the presence of variants.
Prerequisites
- Having an adequate knowledge of the Spanish language, in order to being able to read all of the books scheduled in the bibliography, which includes documents of the referred period, poetical and prose texts, essays written in Spanish.
Course programme
- San Juan de La Cruz’s so-called greatest poems (Noche oscura, Cántico espiritual and Llama de amor viva) stand out during a time of restricted poetic production in his work. These works gloriously reshapes the poetry of Garcilaso de la Vega and Francesco Petrarca, intertwining Biblical guidelines with popular "coplas". San Juan de la Cruz dedicated profound, self- analytical commentaries to these poems which try to clarify, together with verse, the three phases of the road to perfection: purgative, illuminative and unifying.
The Saint’s evocative and inspired prose are obviously not merely poetic nonsense, but, as we see with Dante’s Convivio, a piece in which prose and poetry mesh together perfectly naturally. It’s likely that Saint John had only finished the commentaries dedicated to the last phases (illuminative and unifying) of the soul’s gradually worsening conceit in the earthly journey. On the other hand,the work that would have made a glossary for the "Noche" would seem to have remained a faithful one. St John, in fact, explains the initial verses of this poem in two different texts which, in the surviving manuscripts, are abruptly cut off: one is called "Noche oscura" (like the poem), while the other is named "Subida del Monte Carmelo".
The translation of these texts is “active” (Varvaro), that is, subject to continual rewriting, due particularly to ”piadosa manipulación” (Lledó) of the first compositions and of the ancient Carmelitine publishing.
The course intends to show the possibility of application of method from the common error in a singularly complex translation, examining the relationship between:
a) The different families of manuscrips featured in The "Llama" and The "Cántico", in such a way as to clarify the following strategy of the re-writers.
b) Hand written tradition and printed tradition.
c) The "Noche" (remarks in prose) and The "Subida". Didactic methods
- Frontal lectures on all the course’s topics (15 hours) and practice exercises (15 hours).
Learning assessment procedures
- Oral and Written exam. In the written test, students will prepare the critical edition of a fragment taken from "La Llama" by San Juan de la Cruz (contitutio textus, apparatus, annotation). The oral exam includes a series of questions about the texts listed in the bibliography.
Reference texts
- P. Elia, Historia del texto, in San Juan de la Cruz, Cántico espiritual y poesía completa, Barcelona, Crítica, 2002, pp. CXIX-CXLVII.
San Juan de la Cruz, Llama de amor viva, a c. di P. Elia e P. Tanganelli, Modena, Mucchi, 2008.
A booklet provided by the lecturer.
Alberto Blecua, Manual de crítica textual, Madrid, Castalia.
