Bits and Pieces: How to Organize, Deal W

This course, designed for graduates and (with instructor’s permission) senior undergraduates, has the aims of (i) introducing students to the theoretical and practical complexities of dealing with the many fragmentary remains of Latin (and Greek) writers; (ii) exploring the problems inherent in defining what a ‘fragment’ actually is, in stabilizing its wording, and in coping with matters of attribution when authorship is uncertain; (iii) investigating how fragmentary quotation in a given author complicates the interpretation of that quoting author; (iv) surveying the difficulties involved in the scholarly editing and presenting of the alleged fragments of a given author; (v) asking how modern digital technologies can help and even transform our understanding of the fragmentary textual remains of the Greco-Roman past.