Organisation
[BELOW INDICATIVE, FROM 2018-19; 2020-21 WILL RUN VIA MOODLE]
TERM 1
GREEK LYRIC 1. POETS AND POEMS: QUESTIONS OF FORM, COORDINATES FOR INTERPRETATION
Week 1. Orientation; Sappho 1: 'One More Time’, an introduction to Sapphic poetics
Week 2. Sappho 2: distance and consolation
Week 3. Alcaeus: sympotic groups, poetry and politics, sympotic attitudes
Week 4. Stesichorus: myth, narrative, ornamentation, interpretability
Week 5. Archilochus, Ibycus, Anacreon: praise, blame, identities, subjectivities
Week 6. READING WEEK - NO LECTURES OR CLASSES
Week 7. Simonides and Bacchylides: lyric form, praise, history, contexts, reception (including Guest-Lecturing by Dr Theodora Hadjimichael)
Week 8. Pindar 1: myths and contexts (including discussion of Olympian 1 as case study)
Week 9. Pindar 2: voices and attitudes (including discussion of Nemean 8 as case study)
Week 10. Timotheus’ Persae and the New Music
TERM 2
GREEK LYRIC 2. LYRIC AND…: CONNECTIONS TO BROADER CRITICAL-THEORETICAL ISSUES
Week 1. Lyric and Desire: lack, loss, intensity, affect
Week 2. Lyric and Time: topicalities, transcendence, and ‘the lyric now’
Week 3. Lyric, Rhetoric, and Exemplarity: classical scholarship, the New Criticism, and Deconstruction
Week 4. Lyric and Fiction: ‘the lyric event’ and contemporary theory
Week 5. Lyric and Nature: the ethics of imagery; close-reading skills workshop for extended essay-writing
Week 6. READING WEEK - NO LECTURES OR CLASSES
Week 7. Lyric and Gender: Sappho revisited (again); bibliographical and argumentation skills workshop for extended essay-writing
Week 8. Lyric and Performance: literarity, anthropology, ritual
Week 9. Lyric and Sound: auditory aesthetics, rhythm, and music (focus on Sappho, Pindar, Timotheus)
Week 10. Lyric and Art: comparative interdisciplinarities (including relations with archaic and classical Greek material culture, and also coverage of lyric reception in Cy Twombly)
TERM 3
Week 1. Thematic Overviews in relation to close-reading
Week 2. Exam Preparation: close-reading techniques and resources
Week 3. Feedback: Extended Essay Returns