Course Catalogue

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People in antiquity felt emotions too. They wrote texts and created artwork that both portrayed people feeling emotions and aimed to invoke emotions in their audiences. Likewise, ancient literary critics and theorists had ideas about appropriate and inappropriate ways of portraying emotion and manipulating the reader's emotions. This course engages in the History of Emotions by exploring a range of different texts and/or works of art from ancient Greece and/or Rome (and in some years Egypt) in order to gauge what emotions were expected to be felt by various kinds of people (free, slave, men, women, children etc.) in what types of situations.

1 x 1 hour lecture and 1 x 1 hour seminar per week over 10 weeks.

Available to all students fulfilling requirements for Honours entry into Classics, Greek or Latin, and by arrangement to visiting students or students of other Honours programmes.

GREEK4*** Emotions of the Greeks

CLASSIC5*** Emotions of the Ancients

None

The standard assessments for this course are: 

■ One class test, 50 minutes - 40%

■ One essay, 2500 words - 60%

If required, for instance where a disability prevents a student from undertaking a specific method of assessment, the following alternatives are available: 

■ There are no alternatives to the assessments, but flexible deadlines/extra time/alternative space can be offered as reasonable adjustment (Students should follow the usual process for extensions). 

Further reasonable adjustments may be provided where necessary. Students are encouraged to consult with the course convenor.  

This course aims to:

■ Introduce students to different approaches to studying emotions in the ancient world,

■ Explore the portrayal of emotions, both named and unnamed, in a range of ancient texts and, in some years, works of art,

■ Explore the techniques used by ancient authors and/or artists to engage the reader's emotions,

■ Use ancient literature and/or art as a gauge of the emotional landscape of its time.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

1. Analyse the portrayal of emotions in a range of ancient texts and/or works of art,

2. Analyse the engagement of the readers'/viewers' emotions by a range of ancient texts and/or works of art,

3. Explain and engage critically with ancient theories about emotion in literature and art,

4. Explain some modern theories of emotion and analyse their applicability to ancient emotions,

5. Reconstruct ancient cultural 'scripts' of emotions.