Critical Approaches to Classical Texts: Theory and Methods

Catalog description

These seminars will examine categories fundamental to the study of ancient literature and historiography, highlighting the relevance of ancient philosophy, rhetoric and poetics to modern critical/theoretical approaches. Topics can include: text, author, context, literature, genre, representation, emulation, narrative, historiography, commentary, reception. Contradictions in the idea of ‘classics’ can also be considered, in connection with questions of diversity and ethical approaches to Greco-Roman texts. The course aims to draw on participants’ needs and experiences to offer firm and constructive guidelines for professional academic writing, eliminating common errors and misconceptions (intentional and biographical fallacies, confusion between allusion and intertextuality, ‘topoi and ‘tropes’.)