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. Extracts of the Greek texts will be read in the original.

1 x 1 hour lecture per week over 10 weeks

1 x 1 hour tutorial per week over 10 weeks

1 x 1 hour seminar per week over 5 weeks

Standard entry to Masters at College level and available to students who have obtained a grade of B3 or above in Greek 2B, or at the discretion of the Head of Subject.

Emotions of the Ancients CLASSIC4105

None

The standard assessments for this course are: 

■ One essay, 2000 words - 50%

■ One in-person exam in the April/May diet, 90 minutes - 50%

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,

■ Explore the techniques used by ancient authors to engage the reader's emotions,

■ Use ancient literature as a gauge of the emotional landscape of its time,

■ Introduce the students to the original Greek text of a range of different genres dealing with emotions in different ways.

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

1. Analyse the portrayal of emotions in a range of Greek texts.

2. Analyse the engagement of the readers' emotions by a range of Greek texts.

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

4. Explain some modern theories of emotion and analyse their applicability to ancient emotions as portrayed in the primary texts.

5. Reconstruct ancient cultural 'scripts' of emotions.

6. Translate extracts of a diverse set of Greek texts dealing with emotions into idiomatic English.