Title: TOPICS IN LITERATURE

PRQ:

Everyone knows that ancient Greek and Roman literature has been a key and persisting influence on subsequent literature. Thus a basic familiarity with classical writing would be a very useful acquisition for a student of English. This course aims to provide an introduction to ancient literature and its afterlife. The primary topics or points of focus will be narrative (epic, romance, novel), lyric (including love poetry, pastoral, and satire), and myth.

Presentation, short essay, term paper, final exam.

Achilles Tatius, Leucippe and Clitophon (Oxford).

Classical Literature and its Reception: An Anthology. Ed. Robert DeMaria and Robert D. Brown (Wiley).

Roberto Calasso, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony (Random).

Apollodorus' Library and Hyginus' Fabulae: Two Handbooks of Greek Mythology. Trans. Stephen Trzaskoma and R. Scott Smith (Hackett).

Homer, The Odyssey, trans. Robert Fagles (Penguin).

Petronius, The Satyricon (Oxford).

Ezra Pound, Diptych Rome-London (New Directions).

Propertius, The Poems (Oxford).