14297

WiSe 16/17: Galen's Pharmacology in the Graeco-Arabic Tradition (BLOCKSEMINAR)

Matteo Martelli; Lucia Raggetti

Additional information / Pre-requisites

Modulprüfung, alte Prüfungsordnung: Essay (ca. 5 Seiten), neue Prüfungsordnung: mündliche prüfung (ca. 20 Minuten)

Comments

The Blockseminar will offer an introduction to Galenic pharmacology, with a special focus on the treatise On Simple Drugs. This work has a particular status in the Galenic corpus: it gives the theoretical frame for the classification of simple drugs that will impress the strongest of marks on the later pharmacological tradition (Books 1-5), along with a detailed description of the faculties of plants, minerals and animals based on Galen’s own medical experience (Books 6-11). The participants will be introduced to different aspects of the Greek and Arabic manuscript tradition, and to the philological approach to this multilingual textual transmission of the text — along with the role of what is preserved in Syriac. The structure of the Blockseminar reproduces step by step the methodology that Matteo Martelli and Lucia Raggetti have been developing and applying in their ongoing work on the treatise On Simple Drugs: recension and inspection of all the manuscript witnesses, collation of the text, evaluation of errors and variants, definition of editorial criteria. The critical work on the text and its translation are meant and presented as the essential tools to achieve a deep understanding of the text in its context of composition and, later, of transmission. close