Introductory description

The module aims to provide postgraduate training in the literary interpretation and philological analysis of ancient Greek literary texts in a variety of forms and genres. It will run in the second term of the course, and will involve developing, applying and putting into practice the techniques and methodologies studied in the first term’s core module, ‘Approaching Ancient Texts’. Students’ linguistic skills in reading literary Greek will be brought up to postgraduate level; they will be introduced to the fundamentals of textual criticism and the history of interpretation, including assessment of papyrological reconstructions, palaeography, and commentary by scholiasts as appropriate, and acquire the knowledge and skills required to respond critically to the most advanced classical scholarship. The module takes the form of a weekly seminar, in which we focus on the detailed reading, discussion and interpretation of two main texts or sections of ancient Greek literature, one in verse (e.g. a selection of Pindaric odes, or a play by Sophocles or Aristophanes) and one in prose (e.g. a book of Herodotus or Thucydides), alongside an anthology of further related texts, commentaries and reference works. Greek texts will be chosen on a yearly basis in response to current critical debates and the most recent and original scholarship. Each two-hour session will be devoted to a section of text (students will be asked to prepare in advance by reading the text together with selected scholarship) and take the form of in-depth critical discussion following prepared oral presentations. Students will be able to significantly enhance the knowledge and skills acquired at undergraduate level, exchanging and developing ideas and reading strategies in a supportive and stimulating environment. They will be assessed by a final 5,000-word essay.

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Text 1 (Term 1, starting week 7): Gorgias, Palamedes
To be read in Laks-Most, Early Greek Philosophy Vol. VIII, pp. 186–217.
Text 2 (Term 2): Sophocles, Philoctetes
Text and commentary: Seth Schein, Sophocles: Philoctetes. Cambridge 2013.

Texts to read in translation: Gorgias, Helen; Plato, Protagoras; Sophocles, Ajax; Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric. The Loeb editions are recommended and are available online in Warwick Library databases for Classics. Other translations are available: please ask if you are unable to access them yourselves. I will be able to provide one for Gorgias direct; good translations of Plato and Aristotle are included in the major editions by J. M. Cooper (Hackett) and Jonathan Barnes (OUP).

For each seminar: We will begin with Gorgias in term 1 from after reading week, and turn to Sophocles at the start of term 2, reading from the beginning and working our way through.
For Sophocles, please read the text alongside Schein’s commentary; for the Gorgias, while no commentary currently exists, it will be an interesting exercise to read this text alongside Gorgias’ Helen, and wider readings of Sophistic rhetoric in the bibliography provided.
You are not obliged to read every single item of bibliography, but do as much as you can. If there is anything you cannot find, let me know and I will be able to help.
For each week, following a first week of orientation, I will ask you to prepare a 5-10-minute critical summary of a set chunk of the text prescribed in previous week (c.1000 words if you are writing it out), which each student will present orally at the start of the seminar. In this critical summary, you should attempt to give a tight, detailed account of content and form and to highlight what you consider to be key points of interest or difficulties of interpretation; you may, in doing this, also want to show awareness of, or mention, relevant scholarship. In the seminar itself, we will address difficulties in grammar and syntax, points of interpretation, textual issues as they arise, and nuances in/differences between various scholarly approaches to the author under discussion.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• read ancient Greek literary texts fluently and independently;
• display an ability to employ a variety of strategies and techniques of interpretation and philological analysis in their close reading of classical texts;
• display the knowledge and skills required to respond critically to the most advanced classical scholarship;
• conduct extensive research autonomously;
• produce professionally laid out papers, and give confident, well-organised, fluent presentations.

Indicative reading list

Bibliography (* = particularly recommended)
Gorgias:
*Allen, D. S. (2001) ‘Gorgianic figures’ in T. O. Sloane (ed.) Encyclopaedia of Rhetoric (vol. 1, Oxford) 321–3.
Croally, N. T. (1994) Euripidean Polemic: The Trojan Women and the function of tragedy (Cambridge).
Denniston, J. D. (1952) Greek Prose Style (Oxford).
Denyer, N. (2008) Plato: Protagoras (Cambridge). [Introduction]
Dillon, J. and Gergel, T. (2003), The Greek Sophists (London).
Ford, A. (2002) The Origins of Criticism: Literary Culture and Poetic Theory in Classical Greece (Princeton).
*Gagarin, M. (2001) ‘Did the sophists aim to persuade?’, Rhetorica 19: 275–91 .
*Goldhill, S. (2002) The Invention of Prose (Oxford).
Guthrie, W. (1969), A History of Greek Philosophy Volume Three: The Fifth-Century Enlightenment (Cambridge).
Guthrie, W. (1971) The Sophists (Cambridge).
*Halliwell, S. (2011) Between Ecstasy and Truth: Interpretations of Greek Poetics from Homer to Longinus(Oxford).
MacDowell, D. M. (1982) Gorgias: Encomium of Helen (Bristol).
Pernot, L. (2015) Epideictic Rhetoric: Questioning the Stakes of Ancient Praise (Austin, TX).
Porter, J. I. (2010) The Origins of Aesthetic Thought in Ancient Greece: Matter, Sensation, and Experience(Cambridge).
*Wardy, R. (1996) The Birth of Rhetoric: Gorgias, Plato and their Successors (London).

Sophocles:
Goldhill, S. (2003), “Tragic emotions: the pettiness of envy and the politics of pitilessness,” in D. Konstan and N. Rutter (eds.) Envy, Spite and Jealousy (Edinburgh) 165–80.
Knox, B. M. W. (1964) The Heroic Temper: Studies in Sophoclean Tragedy (Berkeley, CA).
Nooter, S. (2012) ‘Poetic speakers in Sophocles’, in K. Ormand (ed.) A Companion to Sophocles (Wiley-Blackwell), 204–19.
Reinhardt, K. (1979) Sophocles, trans. H. Harvey and D. Harvey (New York).
Roisman, H. M. (2005) Sophocles: Philoctetes (Duckworth Companions to Greek and Roman Tragedy, London).
*Rose, P. (1976) ‘Sophocles' Philoctetes and the teachings of the sophists ’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 80: 49–105, reworked in:
*Rose, P. (1992) Sons of the Gods, Children of Earth: Ideology and Literary Form in Ancient Greece (Ithaca, NY) ch. 5, ‘Sophocles’ Philoktetes and the teachings of the sophists: a counteroffensive’. (Read the second of these if you can.)
Segal, C. (1995) Sophocles’ Tragic World: Divinity, Nature, Society (Cambridge, MA).
*Woodruff, P. (2012) ‘The Philoctetes of Sophocles’, in K. Ormand (ed.) A Companion to Sophocles (Wiley-Blackwell), 126–40 (with further bibliography).

Subject specific skills

By the end of this module students should expect to have:

• acquired the ability to read ancient Greek literary texts fluently and independently, in a range of genres and forms;
• developed the ability to employ a variety of strategies and techniques of interpretation and philological analysis in their close reading of classical texts;
• acquired the knowledge and skills required to respond critically to the most advanced classical scholarship;
• developed into autonomous researchers with the skills and expertise required to produce professionally laid-out papers, develop extended scholarly arguments, and to give confident, well-organised and fluent presentations.

Transferable skills

• critical thinking
• problem solving
• active lifelong learning
• communication (verbal and written)
• information literacy
• professionalism