Ancient Comedy (CLAM010)
This module description relates to the academic year 2011/2.
| Lecturer(s) | Professor John Wilkins |
|---|---|
| Credit Value | 30.00 |
| ECTS Value | 15.00 |
| Pre-requisites | Those of entry to MA programme |
| Co-requisites | |
| Duration of Module | Terms 1 and 2 |
| Total Student Study Time | 10 hours per week, including 22 weekly 2-hour seminars. |
Aims
To enable students to gain detailed knowledge of a wide range of surviving ancient comedies; to form an indpendent, critical understanding of ancient comedy in its own culture and on the relationship between ancient and modern conceptions of the comic.
Intended Learning Outcomes
Module-specific skills:
On completing this module, a student will have wide knowledge of the surviving ancient comedies; the ability to form independent, critical interpretations of individual plays; the ability to make autonomous judgements about the nature and development of ancient comedy; the ability to reflect on the significance of ancient comedy in its own culture and cross-culturally.
Discipline-specific skills:
Ability to form a critical and intellectual framework for evaluating scholarly accounts and forming independent judgements about literary texts and a literary genre. Ability to reflect on, and offer analytic accounts, of the significance of ancient comedy in its own culture and across cultures.
Personal and key skills:
The ability to apply key bibliographical skills, the ability to think autonomously and analytically on the basis of written texts; to construct and defend a sustained argument (both in written form and orally); to work with instructor and peers in an independent, constructive and responsive way. The ability to present work in word-processed form.
Learning/Teaching Methods
Weekly two-hour seminars focused on a set theme. Individual presentations by students serve as basis for sustained discussion by instructor. Essays returned individually with tutorial guidance.
Assignments
Seminar papers and two essays of 4,000 words each.
Assessment
Two essays of 4,000 words (80%) and 2 oral presentations (20%).
Syllabus Plan
Term 1:
1. Comedy and the comic: approaches and theories
2. Theatre history and the origins of Greek comedy
3. Parody and hypertextuality
4. Metatheatricality and audience awareness
5. Comic politics
6. Irony and polyphony
7. Fragments and their uses
8. Comic characterization
9. Rivalry and competitive poetics
10. Religion and ritual
11. Fantasy, utopia and big ideas
Term 2:
1. Chorus, music and dancing
2. Continuity and change
3. Love, sex, and marriage
4. Rape and other crimes
5. The family and society
6. Prologues and plot
7. Comedy in a Roman context
8. Religion and ritual revisited
9. Identity and related problems
10. Remakes, repeats, and rehashes
11. The mother-in-law (and other old jokes)
Indicative Basic Reading List
Indicative Basic Reading List
1. Prescribed texts:
(a) Aristophanes, Acharnians, Knights, Clouds, Wasps, Birds, The Poet and the Women, Frogs, Assemblywomen, Wealth (Penguin Classics, tr. Barrett and Sommerstein).
(b) Menander, The Bad-Tempered Man and The Girl from Samos and Aspis (The Shield), from The Plays and Fragments (Oxford World's Classics, tr. Balme).
(c) Terence, The Girl from Andros and The Mother-in-Law, from The Comedies (Penguin Classics, tr. Radice).
(d) Plautus, The Brothers Menaechmi, The Pot of Gold and Pseudolus, from The Pot of Gold and other plays (Penguin Classics, tr. Watling).
2. Introductory Reading:
M. Leigh, Comedy and the Rise of Rome (Oxford 2003).
P.E. Easterling and B.M.W. Knox (eds.), The Cambridge History of Classical Literature (Cambridge 1985).
M. Silk, Aristophanes and the Definition of Comedy (Oxford 2000).
A.M. Bowie, Aristophanes (Cambridge 1993).
M. MacDowell, Aristophanes and Athens (Oxford 1995).
R. Hunter, The New Comedy of Greece and Rome (Cambridge 1985).
A full secondary reading list will be supplied.
