Irene Tinti

funded by the ‘The Southern Caucasus and its Neighbours’ project, Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies, CEU

Five Platonic (or pseudo-Platonic) dialogues survive in ancient Armenian translations, namely the Timaeus, the Euthyphro, the Apology of Socrates, the Laws, and the Minos (spurious). These versions have been the object of great interest among scholars, ever since the only extant complete manuscript reached St. Lazarus (Venice), in 1835. However, the Timaeus, in particular, still needs to be globally analysed from a linguistic and traductological perspective. During my three-month stay at CEU I will focus on a few highly recurrent linguistic features, which highlight the Hellenised character of the translation. I will also compare their occurrences with the underlying Greek text, in order to verify to what extent the presence of a construction influenced by Greek depends on the same structure being used in the source text. This will lay the foundation for future comparative analyses, meant to ascertain eventual, meaningful similarities with other Hellenised texts. The research will be conducted on colour photographs of the manuscript (which I have directly examined in December, 2010, courtesy of the Mekhitarist Fathers) and on an edited fragment, since a complete critical edition of the Armenian text is not available yet.