Module CLAS3481: CULTURAL RESPONSES TO THE ODYSSEY

Department: CLASSICS AND ANCIENT HISTORY

CLAS3481: CULTURAL RESPONSES TO THE ODYSSEY

Prerequisites

• Either (CLAS2101) 'Greek and Roman epic' or (CLAS2151) 'Traditions of epic'.

Corequisites

• None.

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None.

Aims

• This module provides an advanced module introducing undergraduates who have already gained a developed knowledge of ancient culture to the theory and methods involved in Classical Reception Studies, by concentrating on a key text with which they are already familiar and which has played an unusually generative role in the creation of western culture. The module widens the horizons of the subject-matter taught in the degree programmes by exploring links between the ancient world which the students have been studying and the contemporary world they inhabit.

Content

• This module explores the transhistorical cultural ompact of the Homeric Odyssey from the Renaissance until the third millennium. The texts and artifacts studied will include Monteverdi's opera II ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (1641), Nicholas Rowe's tragedy Ulysses (1706). Victorian lyric poetry, burlesque theatre and painting, James Joyce's novel Ulysses (1922), Derek Walcott's epic Omeros (1990), women poets' reassessments (e.g. Louise Gluck's Meadowlands and Josephine Balmer's Odyssey poems in Chasing Catullus (2004), and movies including Mike Leigh's Naked (1993), Jon Amiel's Sommersby (1993), The Angelpoulos' Ulysses' Gaze (1995), and the Coem brothers' O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000).

Learning Outcomes

• The student should have a knowledge chronology, scale, and nature of the most important translations, texts and artefacts deriving from the Homeric Odyssey, from the Renaissance until the present day, and an understanding of the cultural, aesthetic, and political reasons for its enduring popularity.

• The student will have acquired skills in (i) the history and theory of translation;
• (ii) the core theoretical models and concepts underlying the practice of Classical Reception Studies (cultural relativism; imitation, emulation, reaction; reception vs. appropriation; the 'French school' of 'cultural materialist' Reception Theory vs. the 'Formalist' model of 'intertextual dialogue')
• (iii) an ability to use the key vocabulary in Reception methodology (archetype vs. prototype; context, undertext and intertext; translation vs. version; translation vs. adaptation);
• (iv) ability to use fundamental bibliographical and electronic resources for identifying the key moments in the 'afterlife' of ancient texts.

• The student will have developed to a sophisticated level the comparative evaluation and discursive use of primary evidence both synchronically and diachronically;
• have understood the difference between literary studies conducted in a historical vacuum and those which are historically contextualised;
• have learned to plot a formal stemma of cultural influence from an archetype;
• have digested the key elements in genre theory;
• have learned to investigate independently at least one key text in the reception of antiquity.

Modes of Teaching, Learning and Assessment and how these contribute to the learning outcomes of the module

• Most of the teaching will be done in weekly lectures, in order to ensure a wide basis of shared knowledge, supplemented by four seminars in which students will be encouraged to explore contrasting views of the evidence. Since the course is heavily geared to acquiring skills in the comparison of derivates from a single cultural archetype, and the development of the ability to contextualise individual derivatives historically by means of independent reading, the assessment will be entirely by written assignment entailing both knowledge of the whole course and detailed analysis of selected example of Odyssean Reception, the choice of which is to be approved by the lecturer. There will be one formative and one summative piece of written work, of 2,500 and 4,500 words maximum length respectively.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

One formative essay (by beginning of term 2): 2,500 words maximum length.

■ Attendance at all activities marked with this symbol will be monitored. Students who fail to attend these activities, or to complete the summative or formative assessment specified above, will be subject to the procedures defined in the University's General Regulation V, and may be required to leave the University