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

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

Assessment:

Term 1: 'One Poem, Four Readings': 25% of module mark

An exercise in scholarly engagement, helping students to further develop their interpretative writing skills, especially in connecting close-reading of complex literary texts with broader developments in the history of criticism. Students are asked to present the translation of one text of their choosing from the prescribed list below, along with four excerpts from the bibliography provided, presented in chronological order of publication, pertinent to the text selected (up to 1,500 words), and then write up to 1,000 words of discussion of their own about the significance of the four bibliographical excerpts for broader interpretative trends and issues in scholarship.

There will be at least one 'training session' in class on this, illustrated by an example from the module convenor, prior to the submission deadline. 

Terms 2–3: 4,000-word extended essay: 50% of module mark

Term 3: 1-hour summer exam. 25% of module mark

Commentaries in translation / translation + commentary (original Greek students), testing close-reading skills on selected excerpts.