This course runs in two parallel strands. In the first we study the history of Greek philology from the beginnings to the present day. Important stopping points include the Museum of Alexandria; Byzantine philology from Eustathius to Triclinius; the Italian and French Renaissance; the genesis of Lachmann's method; Nietzsche vs Wilamowitz; Parry and the philology of oral texts; world philology; machine learning and the future of philology. In the second, practical, strand we work with the Princeton-based language model Logion to explore the benefits and limitations of computer-supported philology and tackle real-life philological problems.

What happens to forms across time? Moving beyond the juxtaposition of history and theory, we explore theories of poetic forms in several historical periods and compare these to 20th- and 21st-century ideas. Using the ballad, the sonnet, the lyric, and the line as grounding, we collect, read, and critique both criticism and poetry. When and how does an example of a poetic form take the place of a story of a poetic form? Do our methodologies of reading poetry now and in the past rely on a shared understanding of what a form might mean? How, and when, do poetic forms become abstractions of genres (or abstractions of persons)?

Is there a future to the study of literature? Just as the concept of literature has changed markedly over time, so too have approaches to literature at universities and in the world of media. Yet courses on the history of the study of literature are rare. John Guillory's 2022 Professing Criticism serves as the starting point for this seminar in disciplinary self-reflection on the history and present state of literary study. The practice of literary studies in the USA is compared to other institutional models such as media literacy, Cultural Studies and Literaturwissenschaft in Germany.