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The Classical Tradition


ENGL 3005: Fall, 2005

Texts

 Homer, The Iliad. Trans. Robert Fagles. Viking/Penguin.
David Grene and Richmond Lattimore, eds. Greek Tragedies I and II. U of Chicago Press.
Aristophanes, The Birds and Other Plays. Stephen Halliwell, ed. Oxford UP.
Plato, Great Dialogues of Plato. Trans. W. H. D. Rouse. NAL.
Virgil, The Aeneid. Trans. Alan Mandelbaum. Bantam.
Ovid, Metamorphoses. Trans. Horace Gregory. NAL.

Goals

 To get acquainted with some of the enduring literary works of Western culture.
To advance your capacity to enjoy reading in an informed and sophisticated way.
To learn something of the way literature exists in a residually oral culture.

Quotation

 The primacy of the Greeks in the canon of Western literature is neither an accident nor the result of a decision imposed by higher authority; it is simply a reflection of the intrinsic worth of the material, its sheer originality and brilliance. Bernard Knox, The Oldest Dead White European Males and Other Reflections on the Classics (New York: Norton, 1993): 21.

Grades
Written Assignments 30% All students will be required to submit their written work on Blackboard. If instructions on using Blackboard are needed, ask for them after class.
Alternate assignments each week. (1)250+ words: close readings of textual passages, comments and observations on the text or on material on the websites to be submitted on Monday. (2) The following week, 50+ words on three of your fellow-students' submissions from the week before. Majors in English, communications, humanities, and philosophy, beginning in November, will not have to submit the weekly assignments but will start working on a 3000 word essay to be submitted on Blackboard on December 2. (Three thousand words is about the length of a ten-page paper.) Students from other majors will continue to do the same assignments. All: Be sure and check the syllabus because examinations disrupt the schedule. Note well:Late submissions of the weekly assignments will not be accepted: The assignments are not just writing exercises; they are discussions with other students and are meant to enhance class participation.
Make your comments interesting to your classmates and to me. I emphasize the word interesting. Choose issues and topics that are interesting to you. If you are interested in the question you are answering, your fellow students and I will be interested in what you have to say. If you are not, you will probably say nothing to any of us, and we will have little to say back. Note that these are formal papers, which means they should be correct in both spelling and grammar.
If you include research in your comments, that is, if you use up-to-date scholarship, properly referred to, you are more likely to receive an A, though, of course, an A is not guaranteed. The links furnished throughout the syllabus may be good starting points for writing. If you use them, be sure to refer to them correctly.
Class
Participation		 25% Attendance is very important not only to your grade, but to the general success of the course. After every class I give a grade for class participation: A=answers show insight and appreciation; B=answers questions; C=present with book, prepared, and basically attentive; D=late, or present but without book, or answers show that the reading hasn't been done; X=absent. NB: (1) You get a D for a class in which you don't have the text. (2) Two unexcused absences means your grade will be dropped a full letter. Four unexcused absences result in an automatic D for the course. You can fail this course because of absences. All you have to do to be excused from a class is speak to me or e-mail me before or immediately after each missed class; I don't require documents. However, neither do I remind you through the semester how many times you have been absent.
Tests 45%

15% For tests during the semester. 30% for the final examination.
Academic Integrity

Please note the university's policy on cheating, plagiarism, and other violations of academic integrity.

Syllabus
Greek Literature
The world of Homer is unbearably sad because it never transcends the immediate moment; one is happy, one is unhappy, one wins, one loses, finally one dies. That is all. W. H. Auden, The Portable Greek Reader, 1988.
1 S2 Introduction: What to look for in the Iliad.
Assignment: Read The Iliad, Books 1-4 and Ernest Becker's Idea of the Hero.  To help you keep the names straight in The Iliad, there is a glossary at the end of the book. For a briefer guide to names click on this Homer Glossary. To find the places of The Iliad on a somewhat more detailed map than the one in the book, go to this map of Classical Greece and scroll to the right to find Ilium. Write 250-word comment on the rage of Achilles and submit on Blackboard by Tuesday morning, September 6.
Links:Winged Sandals, produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (in association with The University of Melbourne's Centre for Classics and Archaeology), takes visitors through the world of Greek mythology with a number of Flash-enabled movies, intriguing games, and quizzes. The Perseus Digital Library created by Tufts University is a basic source. Some of the sites below are from there, but you might want to scroll around in it yourself. Here are some possibly useful sites: Encyclopedia Mythica; An Overview of Classical Greek History; Titans and Olympians. For a map that locates ancient troy click on this Ancient Troy Map.
2 S6 Iliad.
Assignment: Read Books 5-8. Write 50+ word comments on three of your fellow students' assignments from last week and submit on Blackboard by Tuesday morning, September 13.
3 S9 Iliad.
Assignment: Read Books 9-12.
4 S13 Iliad.
Assignment: Read Books 13-16. Write 250-word comment and submit on Blackboard by Tuesday morning, September 20.
5 S16 Iliad.
Assignment: Read Books 17-20. Link: The Shield of Achilles. Scroll down to the diagram of Homer's shield and the short essays "Ekphrasis" and "Great People Before Agamemnon." Another picture, The Shield of Achilles by John Flaxman, is in the Royal Collection.
6 S20 Iliad.
Assignment: Read Books 21-24.
7 S23 Iliad.
Assignment: Prepare for Examination on the Iliad.
8 S27 Examination on The Iliad.
Assignment: Read Aeschylus, The Agamemnon. Write 250-word comment on Aeschylus and/or information on web sites on Greek drama, and submit on Blackboard by Tuesday morning, October 4.
Links: Didaskalia: Introduction to Greek Stagecraft. Here are links to the three great Greek tragedians: (1) Theatre History: Aeschylus. There is a shorter biography, but with further links at Theater Database: Aeschylus. (2) Sophocles, and Theatre History: Sophocles and his Tragedies. (3) Euripides  and Theatre History: Euripides and His Tragedies. Greek landscapes has extensive pictures of Greek Theater.
9 S30 Agamemnon.
Assignment: Read Sophocles, Oedipus the King.
10 O4 Oedipus the King.
Assignment: Read Sophocles, Antigone. Write 50+ word comments on three of your fellow students' assignments from last week and submit on Blackboard by Tuesday morning, October 11.
11 O7 Antigone.
Assignment: Read Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris.
12 O11 Iphigenia.
Assignment: Read Aristophanes, Lysistrata.
Links: John Porter's Aristophanes and Greek Old Comedy gives a vivid introduction to the riotous form of Greek comedy. The Origins of Comedy is on Brooklyn College's Introduction to Greek and Roman Comedy site.
13 O14 Lysistrata.
Assignment: Prepare for test on Greek drama.
14 O18 Test on drama.
Assignment: Read Plato, "The Symposium." Write 250-word comment and submit on Blackboard by Tuesday morning, October 25.
Links: For a good introduction to Socrates read Socrates' Background. David Simpson of DePaul University has a helpful page of Notes and Background on "The Symposium."
15 O21 "Symposium."
Assignment: Read Plato, The Republic, Books 1-3.
Links: For a challenging summary and critique of Plato's argument in The Republic, see Plato's Republic by Kelley L. Ross, PhD. It is a publication of the on-line journal of the Friesian Society, which you may find out about by clicking on the Home Page link at the site.
16 O25 Republic.
Assignment: Read The Republic, Books 4-5, 7. Non-majors write 50+ word comments on three of your fellow students' assignments and submit on Blackboard by Tuesday morning, November 1. English, communications, philosophy, and humanities majors begin work on 3000 word paper to be submitted on December 1.
17 O28  Republic.
Assignment: Read The Republic, Books 8-10.
18 N1  Republic.
Assignment: Read The Aeneid, Book 1. Non-majors write 250-word comment and submit on Blackboard by Tuesday morning, November 8.
Links: The Classics Technology Center at Aeneid has an excellent historical introduction to The Aeneid, along with some review questions. The site is particularly valuable because of the links within the text and at the side. PBS's The Roman Empire in the First Century gives an introduction to life in Ancient Rome divided into four sections: the Roman Empire, Ancient Voices, the Social Order, and Life in Roman Times. It includes a timeline. Classics Unveiled has a "mythnet" with a catalogue of the Greek gods, both the Olympian gods, which we encounter in Homer, and the Titans, the more ancient gods whom the Olympians displaced. The rest of the site is devoted to Rome. It contains an outline of Roman history and descriptions of many aspects of Roman life. There are no pictures, and whoever wrote these accounts is not very good at grammar. From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2003. http://scout.wisc.edu/
Latin Literature
19 N4  Aeneid: 1.
Assignment: Read The Aeneid, Books 2-3. In Book 2 Aeneas tells the story of the fall of Troy, including the protest of Laocoon against bringing the horse into the city. One of the great sculptures of the Hellenistic period of Greek art is the scultpure of Laocoon in the Vatican. Click on the small image to get a larger picture.
20 N8  Aeneid: 2-3.
Assignment: Read The Aeneid, Books 4-5. Non-majors write 50+ word comments on three of your fellow students' assignments from last week and submit on Blackboard by Tuesday morning, November 15.
21 N11 Aeneid: 4-5.
Assignment: Read The Aeneid, Book 6.
22 N15 Aeneid: 6.
Assignment: Prepare for examination on Plato and The Aeneid.
23 N18 Examination on Plato and The Aeneid.
Assignment: Read Ovid's The Metamorphoses, Books 1-3. Ovid's Metamorphoses has a good introduction and commentary. The site is illustrated with pertinent art works. Non-majors write 250+ word comments and submit on Blackboard by Tuesday morning, November 22.
24 N22 Metamorphoses: 1-3.
Assignment: Read The Metamorphoses, Books 4-6. Non-majors write 50+ words on three of your fellow students' assignments from last week and submit on Blackboard by Tuesday morning, November 29. See Cellini's famous sculpture of Perseus with the head of Medusa. Click on the image to enlarge it.
25 N29 Metamorphoses: 4-6
Assignment: Read The Metamorphoses, Books 7-9.  Non-majors write250+ word comments and submit on Blackboard by Tuesday morning, December 6.
26 D2 Metamorphoses: 7-9. See The Feast of Achelous by Peter Paul Rubens, mentioned in the introduction to Book VIII.
Assignment: Read The Metamorphoses, Books 10-12. English, communications, philosophy, and humanities majors submit 3000 word paper.
27 D6 Metamorphoses: 10-12.
Assignment: Read The Metamorphoses, Books 13-15. English Majors submit 3000-word paper.
28 D9 Metamorphoses: 13-15.
FX D16 10:00 AM: Final Examination.