CLASS 2802 - Classical Tradition

(HB) (HA-AS)

Spring. 3 credits. Letter grades only.

This course is required of all Classical Civilization majors, and is also enthusiastically recommended for Classics majors and all minors.

A. Kirk.

Greece and Rome left behind a cultural legacy that still shapes the artistic, literary, scientific, and legal aspects of the world we live in today. This course traces those continuities of influence, while simultaneously tracking how they were transformed by later societies to fit their own cultural, intellectual, and technological circumstances. Readings that illuminate the adaptations and reconfigurations of Classical culture will be focused on a different theme each year.

This year’s theme, “Criticism and the Classics,” examines the influence of ancient Greek literature on subsequent literary criticism. How have we reinterpreted Greek texts over the last few centuries, and what is the relationship between ancient literature and the history of ideas? Course readings will survey major approaches from the Enlightenment to contemporary literary theory paired with key ancient sources. Areas of focus will include, among others, Romanticism, psychoanalysis, New Criticism, structuralism, and deconstruction.