Bloodthirsty Revenge: Violence & Compassion in Ancient Greece

Catalog description

In this seminar, we will focus on the rich culture of ancient Greece to think about the ways people respond after they have been mistreated by others. Beginning with Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own," we will consider the deprivation and unequal treatment of humans through the lenses of social class and gender discrimination. Moving back in time to the ancient Greek world, we'll observe in Homer's Iliad how the warrior Achilles evolves from murderous rage after a friend is killed to unexpected sympathy for his enemy's father. We'll study different stories about the Titan Prometheus, whose compassion towards humans is punished by eternal torment, turning him into a symbol of heroic rebellion, and we'll juxtapose the responses of two ancient Greek heroines, Euripides' Hecuba and Sophocles' Antigone, to violence against their families and themselves. Throughout this seminar we'll consider contemporary examples of mistreatment of humans and the roles revenge and compassion play in our own current global affairs. Looking at literature, art, and film, we will learn how ancient cultural artifacts help us understand responses to violence and serve as a prism through which to view our contemporary world and ourselves.