CLAS2151: Traditions of Epic

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• To study representative examples of Greek and Roman epic, to introduce students to a wide range of approaches to the study of epic including its role as a device for memorialisation, and to explore the ways in which the genre developed in Greek and Roman antiquity, and beyond.

• Ancient epic lies at the heart of the Western literary canon, and has influenced the greatest writers from the Middle Ages to modernity.
• At the same time, epic is the only classical genre which is regularly studied in relation to poems which do not belong to the Western literary tradition.
• This course approaches ancient epic both as the cornerstone of western literature and as traditional poetry comparable to other great epic traditions from all over the world.
• It explores the tensions between different approaches to epic.
• examines issues of authorship, traditionality, social context, memorialisation, intertextuality, reception.
• and offers a close study of representative texts such as Homer Iliad and Odyssey, Apollonius Argonautica, Virgil Aeneid, Ovid Metamorphoses and Lucan Civil War.

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• A knowledge of the major examples of Greek and Roman epic, as well as a range of epics from other cultures; a knowledge of the relevant approaches to epic as a genre, and of the development of the genre in Greco-Roman antiquity.

Subject-specific Skills:

• An ability to handle a wide range of diverse and complex epic narratives, to place them in their generic, cultural and historical context, and to discuss in an informed and sophisticated way the issues raised by diverse modern approaches such as oral-traditional research and reception studies.

Key Skills:

• An ability to engage in an informed and sophisticated way with diverse and challenging texts from a range of different cultures; an ability to compare and assess different interpretative approaches and methodologies; a capacity to sustain a clear, well-structured and well-defended argument in written form.

• The lectures focus on the main texts and topics covered in the course.
• The formative essay will require students to develop arguments at greater length.
• The examination will assess the students' familiarity with the evidence and the sophistication of their analyses.
• The summative essay will test students' ability to focus on relevant issues and organise knowledge and argument appropriate to questions raised.

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