{"id":218381,"date":"2016-05-27T17:50:27","date_gmt":"2016-05-27T20:50:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/?p=218381"},"modified":"2016-05-27T17:50:27","modified_gmt":"2016-05-27T20:50:27","slug":"philology-rediscovered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/philology-rediscovered\/","title":{"rendered":"Philology rediscovered"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Reproduction

Eduardo Cesar<\/span>Reproduction of panels from the Portuguese language museumEduardo Cesar<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Historically, philology can be understood as a kind of stem science, from which sprouted not only studies such as etymology, but also modern sciences such as linguistics and literary studies.\u00a0 Strictly speaking, philology is the study of texts, including their language and literary aspects, through the historical analysis of written documents.\u00a0 But, as those branches of knowledge became independent, the contours of the field of philology began to blur.\u00a0 In some cases, even the term itself fell out of use.\u00a0 In place of \u201cclassical philology\u201d (which refers to texts from Ancient Greece and Rome), Brazil often uses the expressions \u201cclassical languages\u201d or \u201cclassical studies.\u201d\u00a0 Nowadays, there is an academic effort underway around the world to strengthen philological studies by rethinking their theoretical framework.\u00a0 In Brazil, the major center for this activity is the University of Campinas (Unicamp).<\/p>\n

\u201cThe theory of philology is not well known in Brazil, but it is actively being developed in countries like Germany,\u201d says Professor Isabella Tardin Cardoso, from the classical studies program of Unicamp\u2019s Institute of Language Studies (IEL).\u00a0 Since 2006, Cardoso has been at Unicamp as a researcher and visiting lecturer of the Classical Philology Seminar of Heidelberg University (Germany), where she has been conducting studies, courses, lectures and workshops, together and on a work exchange basis with German professor J\u00fcrgen Paul Schwindt.\u00a0 Several of these activities received FAPESP funding as topic grants to organize meetings and bring foreign researchers to Brazil.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is interesting to note that classical studies are often viewed as an extremely practical and even theory-resistant field,\u201d Cardoso says.\u00a0 These would be activities that are \u201cquasi-artisanal and devoid of any interpretative principles.\u201d\u00a0 As examples, she cites as tasks attributed to classical philology, the identification and collation of fragments of texts, the comparison and review of ancient texts contained in manuscripts, assumptions about and identification of gaps in knowledge, the contextualization of information found in these documents and their translation.\u00a0 \u201cThese practices are also greatly valued by Brazilian professionals.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fragments<\/strong>
\nA somewhat more thorough observation, however, rejects the notion that these activities lack intentionality or subjectivity, as inferred from the selection of manuscripts to be studied, or the very process of research or translation, when scholars ponder what to give priority to and what to leave out.\u00a0 Among the ancient written documents, there are a great many works that have survived to this day in incomplete form or in different versions.\u00a0 Cardoso cites as example the tragedy Atreus<\/em>, by Latin poet and playwright Lucius Accius (170 A.C.-86 A.C.).\u00a0 \u201cThe order in which a scholar edits the fragments follows certain principles, either deliberately or not,\u201d says Cardoso, who herself has been studying fragments by Accius as well as by Cicero (106 A.C. – 43 A.C.) the Latin orator and philosopher.<\/p>\n

Latinist and IEL-Unicamp Professor Paulo S\u00e9rgio de Vasconcellos notes that not only in Brazil do we find little attention being given to discussion of the theoretical assumptions of classical philology.\u00a0 \u201cOne illustrious classicist, the Scotsman David West [1926-2013], would tell his students to abandon theory in order to delve directly into the texts, as if it were even possible to approach them with no explicit or implicit theory,\u201d Vasconcellos says.\u00a0 \u201cIn recent years, we have witnessed a shift in the field: there is growing interest in discussing the theoretical issues that serve as a basis for the work of the classicists, and the \u201cTheory of philology\u201d project, in the Brazilian case, is vital to this process.\u00a0 The project, which laid the groundwork in 2014 for establishing the Center for Studies on the Theory of Philology, with outposts at Unicamp and in Heidelberg, has Cardoso and Vasconcellos as coordinators in Brazil, and Schwindt and Melanie M\u00f6ller (Free University of Berlin), in Germany.\u00a0 Also taking part are researchers at the Federal University of S\u00e3o Paulo (Unifesp) and the University of Budapest (Hungary).<\/p>\n

The identification, study and questioning of the assumptions involved in the conventional practices of philologists constitute the field of philological theory, which can be understood as an epistemology of the field.\u00a0 \u201cThe epistemological perspective is critical if we would rather not remain outside the entire modern narrative in the arts and humanities,\u201d says Schwindt, a pioneer in this field in Germany.\u00a0 \u201cThe theory of philology examines how we relate to the texts, and the emphasis of my research is in how we find something in these texts that is similar to what first led us to try to understand them.\u201d<\/p>\n

In order to investigate and develop the theory of philology, the exchange groups thought about a possible dictionary to hold the most important concepts in the field, but not including the most obvious ones such as \u201ctext\u201d and \u201cauthor.\u201d\u00a0 Then they began thinking about broaching not concepts, but rather words that \u201care normally presented as having clear meaning.\u201d\u00a0 Among numerous things, they studied the terms \u201cclassical,\u201d \u201cknowledge,\u201d and even the word \u201cphilology.\u201d\u00a0 Hence was born the bilingual and binational project \u201cWords for a theory of philology,\u201d which received support from German research funding agencies such as the DFG and Alexander von Humboldt and has been on-going since 2013.\u00a0 A bilingual book of homonyms is scheduled to be released by Heidelberg publisher Winter Universit\u00e4tsverlag in 2016.<\/p>\n

Schwindt views the project as the kickoff to a study of mapping and even redefining, when necessary, concepts and terms that may be related to philology.\u00a0 \u201cIn these studies, phenomena that are not traditionally associated with the realm of philology, such as temporality, recognition, order and subversion, are put forth as a genuine link to philological study,\u201d notes the German professor.\u00a0 Cardoso was responsible for studying the word \u201cephemerality.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cI think about how this term is present in the philological vocabulary and how it harmonizes with the very ephemerality of knowledge, without which we could not even cogitate the notion of progress, a principle of modern science,\u201d the researcher says.<\/p>\n

Imitation<\/strong>
\nThe project was preceded by others, starting with Cardoso\u2019s essay entitled\u00a0 \u201cTeatro do mundo: filologia e imita\u00e7\u00e3o\u201d, (Theater of the world: philology and imitation) included in the book Was ist eine philologische Frage?<\/em> (What is a philological question?), edited by Schwindt for the German publisher Suhrkamp, one of Europe\u2019s most traditional publishers.\u00a0 \u201cIn the chapter, I talk about an important concept for ancient and modern philological studies: imitation,\u201d Cardoso says. \u201cI consulted Bertolt Brecht\u2019s theatrical work Life of Galileo<\/em> and I use the metaphor \u2018theater of the world\u2019 to more closely observe imitation and the make-believe that it involves, as part of the sciences in general, and as part of philology in particular.\u201d<\/p>\n

The theater metaphor as representation of the world or of life is a recurrent theme in western literature and philosophy and, in Cardoso\u2019s view, an important resource for the formulation and development of science, almost as if scientific text were \u201can imitation of the very object of study.\u201d\u00a0 Continuing her comparison\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 between science and art, Cardoso wrote a piece about the term \u201cillusion,\u201d published as a book for the University of Vienna (Austria), Trompe l\u2019oeil: Philologie und Illusion<\/em> (Trompe l\u2019oeil<\/em>: Philology and Illusion), a title that refers to the French expression for a painting technique that creates the impression of depth in two-dimensional images.<\/p>\n

Intertextuality<\/strong>
\nCardoso notes that unlike what occurred in 19th<\/sup> – 20th<\/sup> century classical studies, imitation, in Ancient times and during the Renaissance, was an accepted and noble literary practice, and functioned as a sort of competition.\u00a0 By way of example, she offers a description of a \u201cworld of the dead\u201d as seen in Homer, Virgil, Dante and Boccaccio.\u00a0 A modern and satirical reference to this habit was Ariano Suassuna\u2019s definition in his comedy The Saint and the Sow<\/em> (1957), as a \u201cNortheastern [Brazil] imitation of Plautus.\u201d\u00a0 Another revealing aspect of the study of imitation is the habit among researchers to look for how to \u201cimitate the author\u2019s intent.\u201d\u00a0 This was seen up to the mid-20th<\/sup> century when, in the absence of historical information, researchers would often disclose \u201cdata\u201d about the life of writers that they construed from the writer\u2019s style.\u00a0 Therefore \u201cPlauto was poor and he spoke to a simpler public\u201d or \u201cCatulo wrote his poems to a girlfriend.\u201d\u00a0 Cardoso underscores the fact that today, the methodologies question such focus on the \u201cauthor,\u201d but do not entirely reject the imitation of his object of study, whether it be the text (its style and logic), or the public that the text would have had at the time it was written.<\/p>\n

Related and innovative studies are being carried out by Vasconcellos in the field of intertextuality, which is the analysis of two or more texts to reveal new aspects about them.\u00a0 \u201cEvery Latinist knows that the literature of Ancient Rome maintains a constant and complex dialogue with Greek literature as well as internally,\u201d the researcher explains. \u201cIn the past, philologists would simply be happy mentioning the passages of the other authors.\u00a0 Intertextual theory came along to lend sophistication to comparative study, demonstrating a process of generation of meaning.\u201d\u00a0 Vasconcellos, along with Patricia Prata, another professor at IEL-Unicamp, leads a team that is translating into Portuguese \u201cessential texts about intertextuality in classical studies,\u201d including Arte alusiva<\/em>, by the Italian Giorgio Pasquali, and On the Shoulders of Giants: Intertextuality and Classical Studies<\/em>, by Englishman Don Fowler.<\/p>\n

To Cardoso, the repercussions of all these studies prove the necessity of reflecting upon the practice of philology.\u00a0 She says that the project \u201cWords for a theory of philology\u201d provided incentive for a binational group of specialists to gather around\u00a0\u00a0 some central questions that surround these practices.\u00a0 Schwindt discovered the benefits of partnerships with Brazilian researchers.\u00a0 \u201cIt became clear to me that the scientific perspective in the study of the structures of philology could better be developed within an academic context that was not exposed to the ideological burden that shaped our work in Europe,\u201d he says.\u00a0 In his view, the frequency of travel by scholars from the two countries prompted by interest in the theory of philology is proof that there is fertile ground for both sides.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Researchers discuss theoretical issues for classical studies of Philology","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[165],"tags":[244],"coauthors":[137],"class_list":["post-218381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humanities","tag-linguistics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218381\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218381"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=218381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}