Instructor: Dr.
D. Mirhady
Teaching
Assistant: Chris Morrissey
AQ 5113, 291-3906 AQ 5126, 291-5378
Email: dmirhady@sfu.ca
Description: This course will focus on the stories the people of the ancient Greek world told to entertain each other, to explain the nature of their world and its institutions, to reflect on current challenges, and to preserve a memory of their distant past. It was thus an almost pervasive vehicle for communication, a sort of language. Because classical mythology is so thoroughly anthropomorphic, it has also raised questions about the nature of the human condition. These questions have led people to return to its stories continually since antiquity. While keeping aware of our own, modern perspective, our goal in this course is to begin to master and appreciate these stories and the role they played in the culture that produced them.
Following a university senate initiative to give greater emphasis to writing skills in the undergraduate curriculum, this course will pioneer the teaching of writing skills and the use of writing as a vehicle for learning.
Grading: Tutorial participation 25%
Papers 30%
Mid-term exam 15%
Final exam 30%
For every tutorial meeting, students will be expected to have done the required readings and to be able to participate in discussion about the assigned topics. During each tutorial meeting, there will also be a short writing assignment. The tutorial participation mark will be partly based on students’ taking these assignments seriously, although no specific mark will be assigned to them.
Each student must hand in three 500-word prepared papers, one each month of the term. The papers must address the tutorial topics each week and be handed in at the lectures the day the material is being discussed (keep a copy for yourself).
The mid-term (35 minutes) will have only multiple-choice questions based on the readings and lectures. The final exam (90 minutes/April 7, 3:30 PM) will have both multiple-choice and essay questions.
Required Texts:
Homer, The Iliad, trans. Fagles. $23.99
Homer, The Odyssey, trans. Fagles. $21.99
Grene, D. (trans.) Greek Tragedies, vol. 3. $17.50
Shelmerdine, S. (trans.) The Homeric Hymns. $16.00
A Guide to Doing the Papers
Goals:
To
have you engage in historia, research, and come to your own, independent view about some
aspect of classical mythology.
To have you learn
some of the basic strategies of academic writing, especially in the humanities.
To
allow you to work through the material in such a way that you may appropriate
it, i.e. make it your own (and remember it for the exam).
To
have you come to the tutorial with a position on the material already staked
out. (I’ll expect those who have
written on the topic on any given day to speak for a couple minutes; that will
form part of the evaluation.)
To
have you develop your writing skills.
If there are too many mechanical errors, I will ask you to correct and
resubmit your paper in order to get a mark. For help, consult
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/
To
have you work out some preliminary thoughts about a subject that you may want
to take up in a more elaborate way in a senior course. This paper can form what we call an
“abstract” for your future essay.
Procedure:
Do
all of the assigned reading and take note of whatever may be relevant to the
topic. Take some time to
brainstorm: look for opportunities to compare and contrast; seek out key terms
and concepts; think critically about the sources; anticipate objections.
Assume
that your reader is another student in the class who has done the reading but
has not given as much thought to the point you want to make. While you should use a formal, academic
tone, there is no need to retell the story to this person.
Make
a single, clear statement of the point you want to make (your thesis statement,
which should be the first sentence of the paper), then back up that statement with arguments and
specific information.
The
first paragraph should give your argument in a nutshell. Do not cite specific evidence in
it. Subsequent paragraphs should
detail the argument. The
conclusion may look beyond your paper to associated issues.
Do
as much of the thinking as possible by yourself. Keep quotations short - they represent someone else’s
thinking. Paraphrase rather than
quote.
Keep
the paper within 500 words.
Mechanics:
Put
all identifying information (e.g. your name, the date) on one line at the top of the first page. Do not use a title page.
For
any specific, disputable information or a quotation, cite your source. Since these are very short papers, do
not use footnotes. For instance,
if you use Homer for specific information, write (Il. 1.48) at the end of the sentence before
the period to indicate that your information stems from the Iliad, book one, line 48. Do not bother with a
bibliography.
Consider
information gleaned from footnotes in your texts as background information.
It can save you from errors, but it should not play an active role in your papers. The same is true for class lectures. That is, neither the footnotes nor the
lectures should ever
be cited. If specific information
cannot be grounded on our texts, it should not appear in your papers.
Check
the mechanics of your paper thoroughly for grammatical errors, spelling, and
typographical mistakes. It is even
better to ask a classmate to proofread your paper once you have done so. Feel free to pencil in changes on
your typescript. The most common errors are comma
splices, dangling modifiers, and confusions between “it’s” and “its”. Be aware that I tolerate split
infinitives with difficulty.
Double
space and use standard margins and font sizes, that is, 12 point.
Caveats:
When
referring to events in a story that is in a text under discussion, use the
present tense even if the
text narrates them in the past tense.
Avoid saying much
about the modern world. You may
briefly illustrate a point by mentioning a modern parallel, but remember that
you are writing about classical mythology. We are not interested in your views about the modern world
(at least, not for this course).
Write
nothing about yourself or your opinions; it wastes space. I know that what I’m reading represents
your thoughts. Instead of writing
“in my opinion,” write something like “it appears that” if you want to qualify
a statement you are unsure of.
Better yet, explain why the statement needs to be qualified.
Avoid
trite conclusions such as those that claim that the classical world and the
modern world are similar.
Avoid
colloquialisms, slang, and contractions.
Although you are writing as if to your classmates, keep a formal
distance.
The
spellings of classical names vary in this course as they do in our language in
general. You need to get used to
this fact. Some spellings are
influenced by the literary transmission through Latin, while others attempt to
transliterate Greek spellings directly.
You don’t want to bother with all the details, and you can certainly use
in your writing any spelling that appears in our course material. As rules of thumb, remember that C = K
(Kastor/Castor), OI = OE (Oidipous/Oedipus), AI = AE (Aiskhylos/Aeschylus), and
OS = US (Ouranos/Uranus).
Abbreviations
Il. Iliad (e.g.
Il. 6.25 = Iliad book 6 line 25)
Od. Odyssey
OC Oedipus at Colonus (e.g. OC
625 = Oedipus at Colonus line 625)
Eum. Eumenides
Alc. Alcestis
Phil. Philoctetes
Bac. Bacchae
HH Homeric Hymn (e.g. HH 2.25 = Homeric Hymn to Demeter (2) 25)
Course
Schedule
January
3
Introduction: course
procedures; what classical mythology is; historical overview.
10 The Olympian Pantheon:
Homeric Hymns to Zeus (23), Poseidon (22), Hera
(12), Demeter (13), Hestia (24, 29), Athena (11, 28), Apollo (21), Artemis (9, 27), Hermes (18), Ares (8), Hephaestus (20), Aphrodite (6, 10),
and Dionysus (26)
17 The
Goddesses of Fertility: Homeric Hymns to Demeter (2) and Aphrodite (5)
Tutorial
Topic: what does either of these
poems reveal about their authors’ attitudes toward marriage?
24 God
of Prophecy, God of Theft: Homeric Hymns to Apollo (3),
Asclepius (16), Hermes (4), Pan (19)
Tutorial
Topic: what roles do violence play
in one of the poems, and what alternatives to it appear?
31 God of Wine: Euripides’ Bacchae and Homeric Hymns to Dionysus
(1, 7)
Tutorial
Topic: what roles do pity or anger play in Bacchae, in the activity of the play itself, in the reactions
of the chorus, or in the reaction of the audience?
7 The
Human Condition: Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus and Greek Tragedy
No
Tutorial Topic
No
Tutorial: instead, write a five-minute response paper on the cinematography of
the film and how it affects the storytelling. Think about how an ancient audience would have
viewed/read/heard the play and the strategies used by a painter or sculptor.
28 The
Hero: Euripides’ Alcestis and the Homeric
Hymn to Heracles (15)
Tutorial
Topic: explain Euripides’ Alcestis.
in terms of Aristotle’s concept of hamartia.
7
The Wrath of
Achilles: Iliad 1, 3, 6, 9,
16, Caldwell on Potiphar’s wife
Tutorial
Topic: describe the
interplay between visual description and plot in one of the scenes from the Iliad.
14 The End
of Wrath: Iliad 18, 22, 24 and
Sophocles’ Philoctetes, Hamilton
on Philoctetes
Tutorial
Topic: describe the roles of pity
and fear in either the Iliad books
or Philoctetes. Do not use Hamilton.
21 Film Presentation: Iphigenia
No
Tutorial: instead, write a five-minute response paper on the hamartia of Agamemnon.
28 Return:
Aeschylus’ Eumenides, Odyssey 1,
6, 9-12, Hansen on Odysseus’ oar
Tutorial
Topic: are the notions of justice
in the Eumenides consistent with
those of Odyssey 1?
4 Revelation:
Odyssey 13, 18, 22, 24, van
Nortwick on Penelope and Nausicaa
Tutorial
Topic: argue that van Nortwick is
wrong.
7 3:30 Final Examination