Objectives, research areas and research training
The main goal of our doctoral program is to provide students with the philological and analytical skills needed to understand a text, taking into account its material and literary aspects as well as a wider, systemic view of the issues involved in the process of interpretation. The wide variety of disciplines represented by the board members favours a strongly interdisciplinary approach. Students will acquire a comprehensive and thorough knowledge of the subjects they study, enabling them to tackle complex research issues in highly-qualified fields.
The PhD program is articulated into three different, but complementary, curricula, thus fostering interdisciplinary collaboration: Modern philology, Modern foreign languages and literatures, and Musicology. Each curriculum has its own specific goals.
Disegni di Franco Fortini, da un foglio dattiloscritto di La poesia delle rose
The curriculum consolidates the long tradition of philological and linguistic studies that characterises the University of Pavia, testified to by a significant series of scholarly studies, text editions and commentaries. The rigorous philological method taught here allows students to investigate a text as a form of writing and as a linguistic communicative act in which addressor and addressee collaborate to the writing, transmission, interpretation and/or representation.
This method, refined by the new tools of digital humanities, unifies a wide range of researches based on the use of the Italian language in literary creation, cultured and popular, including the written and oral documents of our social history, in all its elements.
The main lines of research include the Classics, Romance Medieval literature, the Renaissance, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the cultural archives of the twentieth century and contemporary literature, with a specific focus on genetic criticism, authorial philology and textual tradition, popular literature, metrical theory and analysis, the history of philology, the theatre, cinematic languages, art history; these reflect the interests and expertise of scholars in our Department and ongoing research projects (regional, national and international).
La volpe e il corvo, incisione da Jean de la Fontaine, Fables Choisis (1755-1759)
The curriculum continues the decades-long experience of the previous PhD program in Foreign languages and literatures, along with the research interests in common with the other two curricula, thus offering the opportunity for a strong interdisciplinary approach which encompasses both research and teaching activities.
Research areas: English literature, German philology, French studies, German studies, Spanish studies, Slavic studies. The program promotes a comparative approach to the study of European and American cultures, which may also include other artistic languages.
The program prioritises a solid training, promoting research in all the disciplines taught by the staff; depending on the linguistic area, they include: critical editions of texts from the Middle Ages to the present, analysis and textual criticism, the epic, the novel and its development from the 16th century to the present, the lyric and poetic languages, the theatre, Irish literature, identity, autobiography, and history, translation and rewriting, spiritual literature, didactic texts, literary translation, phraseology, language history and variations, stylistics.
The program benefits from numerous contacts and long-standing collaborations with universities and research centres in the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Germany, Spain and Russia, also providing opportunities for the co-supervision of PhD dissertation.
The Department of Humanities also publishes the academic journal “Il Confronto Letterario. Quaderni di Letterature Straniere Moderne e Comparate dell’Università di Pavia”.
Beethoven, autografo della Sonata op. 110: Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin - Preußischer Kulturbesitz Mus.ms.autogr. Beethoven, L. v., Artaria 196, p. 14
The curriculum enables students to acquire a thorough musicological competence, supported by a marked interdisciplinarity, both internal and external to the main areas of research (music history; musicology), which are interdisciplinary by nature. The main fields of investigation are united by the primary attention to the text understood in a broad sense, and include: the musical text in its historical (notation, manuscript and printed transmission) and artistic phenomenology (analysis and hermeneutics), the literary text and its musical setting (stylistic, metric and content consistency), the performative text in musical theatre (scenography, mise en scene), the discourse about music (practical and theoretical treatises, aesthetic and critical studies), visual texts as vehicles for historical-musical information (musical iconography). The curriculum offers a solid training, reflecting the interests of the research groups active in the Department of Musicology and Cultural Heritage. The Department of Musicology and Cultural Heritage also publishes the open access academic journal “Philomusica online”.
Each curriculum includes a number of distinctive research areas, some of which are cross-cutting.
1. Genetic criticism and textual tradition; critical editions and commentaries of texts from the origins to the 21st century
2. History of literary criticism
3. Theory of literature
4. Renaissance and Modern literature and culture
5. Mass and consumer literature
6. Italian linguistics
7. Dramatic texts and places
8. Philology and criticism of film language
9. Metrical theory and analysis
10. Medieval art history: between artwork, text and context
11. Reception of Greek and Latin texts in modern literatures.
Academic disciplines:
• L-ART/01 HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL ART
• L-ART/05 PERFORMING ARTS
• L-ART/06 CINEMA, PHOTOGRAPHY AND TELEVISION
• L-FIL-LET/02 GREEK LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
• L-FIL-LET/04 LATIN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
• L-FIL-LET/05 CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY
• L-FIL-LET/09 ROMANCE PHILOLOGY AND LINGUISTICS
• L-FIL-LET/10 ITALIAN LITERATURE
• L-FIL-LET/11 CONTEMPORARY ITALIAN LITERATURE
• L-FIL-LET/12 ITALIAN LINGUISTICS
• L-FIL-LET/13 PHILOLOGY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE
• L-FIL-LET/14 LITERARY CRITICISM AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
The program covers 6 areas, interacting also on a comparative basis: English literature, Germanic Philology, French studies, German studies, Spanish studies, Slavonic studies. Within these areas, the following fields are foregrounded:
1. Critical edition and analysis of Medieval Germanic texts
2. Ancient book studies
3. Criticism of the European novel
4. Textual analysis and criticism (theory and practice)
5. Literary translation
6. Language studies (history of the English/French/German/Russian/Spanish language)
7. History of drama (script and performance).
Academic disciplines:
• L-LIN/03 FRENCH LITERATURE
• L-LIN/04 LANGUAGE AND TRANSLATION – FRENCH
• L-LIN/05 SPANISH LITERATURE
• L-LIN/06 LATIN AMERICAN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES
• L-LIN/07 LANGUAGE AND TRANSLATION - SPANISH
• L-LIN/10 ENGLISH LITERATURE
• L-LIN/13 GERMAN LITERATURE
• L-LIN/14 LANGUAGE AND TRANSLATION - GERMAN
• L-LIN/21 SLAVIC STUDIES
• L-FIL-LET/15 GERMANIC PHILOLOGY
1. Musical philology from the Middle Ages to the 21st century
2. Music theories and analysis from Antiquity to the 21st century
3. Musical theatre from the 17th to the 21st century
4. Music and literature
5. Music and the media
6. Organology and music iconography
7. Ethnomusicology
8. Contemporary popular music
Academic disciplines:
• L-ART/07 MUSICOLOGY AND HISTORY OF MUSIC
• L-ART/08 ETHNOMUSICOLGY
Duration (years): 3
Reserach period abroad: not mandatory; however, students are encouraged to spend time abroad for research, stages and language courses.
Number of PhD positions (per year): 15
Entry requirements.
Italian “Laurea vecchio ordinamento” or “Laurea specialistica/Laurea magistrale” or an equivalent second-level degree issued by an AFAM (Alta Formazione Artistica e Musicale) institution; an academic degree awarded abroad and recognised by the examining Committee as being eligible for the selected PhD competition.
Teaching and assessment (first two years).
Starting from the XXXIX cycle, first- and second-year PhD students must submit a research plan agreed upon with their supervisor, following the guidelines below:
- 6 ECTS for interdisciplinary courses, of which at least 3 in the activities offered by the PhD Higher Education School (SAFD);
- min. 12-max. 16 ECTS for participation in/attendance to the doctoral lectures offered by the PhD program (1 ECTS corresponds to 4 hours);
- min. 8-max. 12 ECTS for other activities agreed upon with the supervisor (these may include conferences, essays, seminars, publications, organisation of graduate conferences, study and research abroad).
At the end of each year, students will have earned:
- at least 20 ECTS for the first year;
- at least 10 ECTS for the second year.
Assessment: written report on the activities completed during the year.
Minh-Trang Nguyen al t'rưng esegue un brano tradizionale vietnamita
The Department of Humanities offers spaces equipped for philological-linguistic and historical-literary research (computers with printers, microfilm e microfiches viewers, scanners, etc). PhD students can also access the equipment of the Department of Musicology and Cultural Heritage (based in Cremona), which includes musical instruments, audio-visual equipment, photocopiers and scanners, and computers.
The resources available in the Humanities Library are remarkable: more than 400.000 volumes, 4.400 periodicals, 24.600 photographs and 12.000 maps. The Musicology Library owns 47.000 volumes (monographs, collections, musical scores), 384 periodicals, 15.000 audio and video recordings (vinyl records, CD, DVD), 3000 microfilms and 3000 slides.
PhD students may also avail themselves of the Biblioteca Universitaria (a national library) and of the equipment in facilities and centres with which there are collaboration agreements, both in Italy and abroad.
Don Abbondio e i bravi. Illustrazione di Gallo Gallina (1830)
Città del Vaticano: Pontificio Istituto di Musica Sacra.
Italia: Università di Bari; Università di Bergamo; Università di Bologna; Università di Ferrara; Università di Firenze; Università di Macerata; Università di Milano; Università di Palermo; Università del Piemonte Orientale; Università di Pisa; Università di Roma La Sapienza; Università di Torino; Università di Udine; Università di Trento; Università di Venezia; Università di Verona.
Bulgaria: Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski.
Francia: Université de Franche-Comtée, Besançon; Université de Paris-Nanterre (Paris X); Université Jean Monnet de Saint- Etienne; Université Paris IV Sorbonne; Université de Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines; Université de Paris III- Sorbonne Nouvelle; Université de Poitiers; Université de Tours.
Germania: Universität Bayreuth; Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg; Karls- Universität Heidelberg; Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel; Ruprecht-Universität zu Köln; Ludwig Maximilians- Universität München; Universität Paderborn; Universität Passau; Julius Maximilans- Universität Würzburg.
Gran Bretagna e Irlanda: Trinity College, Dublin; University of Hull; University of Leicester; The University of Reading.
Russia: Museo del libro della Biblioteca statale russa (Mosca); Istituto di letteratura russa Puskinskij dom, Accademia delle scienze russe (San Pietroburgo).
Spagna: Universidad de Córdoba; Universidad de Jaén; Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Universidad de Sevilla; Universidad de Valladolid.
Don Quijote e Sancho Panza. Ilustrazione di Gustave Doré (1869)