Teaching Delivery: This module is taught in 10 weekly lectures

Content: This module consists of reading extended portions of Longus’ Daphnis and...

Teaching Delivery: This module is taught in 10 weekly lectures

Content: This module consists of reading extended portions of Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe in the original Greek, translation of sections into English as well as discussion of language, style, argument and context. Over the course of the module, students will become familiar with an important writer of Greek literature and with imperial Greek views on women, love, religion, politics, ethics, and pastoral literature, and acquire skills to discuss these issues with reference to appropriate evidence. Students will be expected to translate the Greek and read some of the relevant secondary literature every week.

Skills:  By the end of the module, students should be able to demonstrate intellectual, transferable and practicable skills appropriate to a level 6 module and in particular will be able to demonstrate:

– a good overall sense of the background, emergence and development of Greek prose fiction (‘the novel’)

– an ability to translate and comment upon Greek literature of the period

– an ability to comment upon the relationship between Greek literature of this period and its predecessors

– an awareness of some of the sexual, political and historical issues relevant to literature of this kind in this period

– the capacity to engage critically with both primary and secondary literature to produce innovative interpretations and insights

– the ability to deploy appropriate evidence in oral presentation and discussion as well as in written work

– an understanding of the methodological challenges of dealing with literature of this period

– an awareness of the key theoretical issues relevant to this material

Texts: 

E. Bowie, ed., Longus: Daphnis and Chloe, Cambridge, 2019. ISBN 978-0-521-77659-2

Shannon N. Byrne and Edmund P. Cueva, eds., Longus' Daphnis & Chloe: Introduction, Greek Text, Notes. An Annotated edition, Wauconda, Illinois, 2005. ISBN 0-86516-593-9.