In 2021/2 2 will be teaching:
Introduction to Greek Culture. This semestrial cornerstone course introduces the culture of Ancient Greece through Greek literary texts (read in translation) which present the Greek perspective on Greek language, writing, rituals of epic, dramatic performance, athletics, debate in political assembly, court of law and symposium, scientific and agricultural invention, medicine, ethics and values, and colonization. Myths of gods, heroes and historical figures are depicted in epic, drama, history, philosophy, rhetoric and biography.
Herodotus. In this first-semester intermediate reading course I give an overview of the special language of Herodotean Greek whose Kunstsprache features dialectal and stylistic elements, as well as conventions of the technical genres of the earliest Greek prose writings. We will read selections from books I and III of the Histories, pausing over narrative technique, motifs, style and philological textual criticism.
Plato: Gorgias. In this second-semester advanced prose course we will read extensive passages of Plato’s dialogue Gorgias in Classical Greek, with special attention to the Greek syntax and grammar, to aspects of urbanitas, hedging and sophistic mannerisms, to characterization and dynamics of the interlocutors, to the dialogue technique, and the literary mise-en-scène. Aside from references to the commentaries of Stallbaum and Dodds, we will also draw on the ancient exegesis of this dialogue by Olympiodorus.
Aristophanes: Birds. In this second-semester verse reading course we will read the Birds by Aristophanes, the 5th century B.C. dramatic author of Old Comedy. The meter, staging, circumstances of contest and performance will inform our close philological reading of the Greek text, along with the apparatus criticus, Dunbar’s commentary, and the ancient Scholia. Dialogue technique, parody and the structural features of Old Comedy (chorus, parabasis, spoken, and sung parts) will be addressed.
Narrative and Dialogue: Seminar. In this advanced seminar, to be held in the second semester, we will study narrative and dialogue styles in the Greek prose of Heliodorus, Achilles Tatius, Galen and other authors of fiction and non-literary prose of this period. We will examine the interrelations between literary and non-literary texts and their conventions and applications of narrative and dialogue modes, as well as the classical models on which they draw. Some attention will be given to the Second Sophistic writings and milieu and to the interrelations between literary and scientific or technical sources and the practices of style and composition used in them.
Advanced Greek: Part II. In this second-semester second year course, after an introduction t the growing literature on the history, lexicon, syntax, genre and author styles of Ancient Greek, we focus on Classical Greek syntax, particle use, impersonals, correlatives, a range of clauses and sentences opening with relative pronouns and adverbs, nominal and adjectival composition, syntagms involving infinitives and verbal nouns, and other grammatical issues on demand. Likewise we hone skills for reading unseen passages in a range of styles and genres, and familiarize ourselves with variant usages in this highly heterogeneous language.