History of the Commentary and the Dialogue as Educational Practices from Antiquity till Modern Times

Members of the intersession group

• Dr. Elia Marinova
• Dr. Nevena Panova
• Dr. Katerina Ierodiakonou
• Aneta Dimitrova
• Dr. Gorana Stepanich
• Vladimir Marinov
• Svetoslav Ribolov
• Dr.Alexander Marey

Description of the intersession activity

The project belongs to the section “Teaching practices and techniques - syllabi design”, but it is expected to be something more than producing a new syllabus/a course with a traditional subject. It has been conceived not as a series of lessons about a particular author, work or problem, but as a history of two of the most influential scholarly genres from antiquity till now. A subject of study is not only the didactic use of commentary and dialogue, but their importance as sources for the history of ideas about education and learning. In a way our project will be an epistemological attempt at reconstructing the development of the methods and techniques of the commentary and the dialogue in different cultural and ideological contexts. Conclusions should be made about repeating patterns, fading away and return of some principles in the commentary and dialogue tradition. Onother field of research is the relationship between commentary/dialogue and the paedagogical theories, cultural events and shifts of the epoque. Finally, a goal of our project is to do justice to the commentary and the dialogue as important contributions of the antiquity to the contemporary educational practices, and to offer an understanding of both of them as communicative situations and intellectual activities.

The final results of this activity should be applicable to most of the subjects taught in Classics and related disciplines. This can happen by offering some patterns of methodology to be transferred to other subjects, and demonstrating how to modernize and enrich teaching and learning techniques, reading practices and approaches to the analysis of complex texts and problems. On a broader scale, it will be an auxiliary course helping teachers in Classics, Mediaeval Studies, Philosophy to realize what mechanisms gave the specifics of the process of teaching and learning in our disciplines.

There is obviously a close link between the textual genre of commentaries and the social practice of school education. School practices impinge upon different forms of commentary writing, and inversely various kinds of commentaries affect the practice of teaching. Furthermore, commentaries have always regulated access to their institutions and reflected some particular ideals of scholarship. We could hardly overestimate, if we say, academic commentary represents the kind of scholarship that has defined Classics for the past 200 years. But our goal is to trace back the tradition of the ancient scholia and of mediaeval and humanist commentary, which succeeded to instrumentalize the ancient text for the purposes of a more general education. Classical philology is one of the few academic disciplines in which commentary continues to be a living genre, even in its most canonic forms. At first glance it is a paradox, as the commentary on ancient authors is maybe the most conservative genre of scholarly prose. The university institution produces this impersonal and objective type of commentary, which actually reflects the professionalisation of the discipline. It has its advantages as a balanced attempt at reconstructing the antiquity and commenting on facts and cultural phaenomena, but it excludes some important characteristics inherent to the mediaeval and humanistic commentary - the rhetoric discourse, the manifestation of commentator’s aesthetical, political a.o. views. The evaluation and revival of some commentary techniques and ideas about the role of the commentary would allow the interpreters nowaday to contextualize their work more directly into the contemporary cultural situation. By studying the development of the genre from the ancient scholia, through the late Alexandrian and the Antiochian commentary, through the specifics of the judicial commentary and the Byzantine scholia to the humanist critical approaches, we shall be able to understand the commentary as an academic practice and a didactic discourse, fluctuating between convention and innovation.

Last issue of discussion will be the electronic commentary and its relevance for classical scholarship. A particular problem to stress is lemmatizing the text commented upon in an electronic format and the consequences for the very understanding of the nature of the commentary on ancient authors as a linear text, being provided with critical apparatus. This study should result in a discussion on the logic of further development of the commentary and of the discipline “Classical philology” as well.

The study of the ancient dialogue and the forms it developed in mediaeval and modern times could provide a good starting point for observing ancient and modern teaching practices in the perspective of the interaction between oral and written communication. The attempt to draw the written text closer to the oral discussion and its context has been - starting with Plato’s attitude and heritage - the most essential reason for creating a dialogical text. The dialogue has to be seen in this perspective as an educational practice, and the main intention of Plato’s dialogues - as a didactic one, i.e. the listeners/ readers of the discussion written down would be willing to participate in a similar, but vivid, oral form of knowledge exchange and they would become as good as real members of Plato’s school. We can find this didactic function of the dialogue manifested implicitly or directly in the sources. Authors’ reflections on the specifics of the method applied would be a particular and highly valuable point of research in the project.
The main focus of our work will be those dialogue subgenres, which have been directly designed for educational purposes and used as educational materials. On the other side, we are interested in the opportunities the dialogue provides to make students more active, flexible and independent, when involved in a dialogue situation. That means to find out and classify the principal features and rules of the fruitful dialogue communication. We are planning to study mostly Greek and Latin texts, taking due account of Old Bulgarian and other sources as well.

By this we will try to trace back the tradition leading from the antiquity to some modern educational practices based on oral or written patterns of dialogue. Last but not least, we intend to point out our own problems as teachers and to propose a revision of some didactic techniques, relying on a broader understanding of the dialogue as a communication not only between the teacher and the student, but between the man and the text, the oral and the written display of knowledge, the traditional educational methods and its computer applications as well.

Stages of work

• All members of the intersession group are invited to present a list of ancient, mediaeval or modern texts which they are familiar with, and which represent specific dialogical educational practices or types of didactic discourse in the commentary tradition. The first step, therefore, would be to draw up a catalogue of formal discursive features which would define the commentary and the dialogue as educational practices. By this doing, we shall create a network of texts which illustrate different paedagogic approaches, applying different methodology and solving different problems.
• We should describe how we intend to use the outcomes of this research for the practical needs of teaching and learning at the university, i.e. in what terms “old genres” like the commentary and the dialogue could be applied as relevant and innovative practices in the higher education. A special stress would be laid on “experimental” dialogical practices and the technology of the modern electronic commentary.
• Exchange of ideas with other participants in the project “Contextualizing Classics”, a discussion about the need of commentary and dialogue as especially productive patterns in Classics teaching, and the proper correlation of teachers’ and students’ participation in the process of learning.
• The summary of our work will be presented on the project web site and in the on-line journal as well. The final goal of this activity is to elaborate an interdisciplinary, (and, if possible, with an international participation) two semestrial course, incorporated into the university curricula for a longer term. The most valuable outcome of the project will be to produce a reader/ annotated sourcebook, designed for teachers and students of other faculties as well. The point would be not just to bring together a number of different academic studies, but rather to form a coherent whole, a complex look at the history of commentary and dialogue as educational practices and models of communication, complementing one another.

Timetable

• Specify the research interests and teaching experience of all group members. Consider selection criteria for creating the frame of the team work. Propose the most relevant Greek or Latin texts to be worked through in details. By 15. March 2006
• Specify members’ commitment to the different stages and fields of the project. Begin assembling bibliography (a catalogue of primary sources + secondary literature). March 2006 -
• First online presentation of concept and frame of the project. Hold a thematic discussion which can take place on the project’s forum, involving participants in other intersession groups. Present a plan of some possible applications of commentaries and dialogue in the university curricula. May 2006
• Design a model syllabus of an optional university course. Present a draft outline of a reader for the specific needs of the course (list of authors, works and passages, a plan for items, articles, worksheets to be included). Prepare a case study of possible modern uses of the commentary and the dialogical techniques in the higher education. September 2006, Second summer session.