Introductory description

This module proposes to explore the relationship between the realms of sexuality and gender and Latin literature. Topics of sex and gender are present throughout Roman literature, from the scatological poetry of Catullus to Statian poems commissioned to celebrate same-sex relationships. In this module, students will focus on two major currents: 1) how sexual/gendered themes become evident in Latin poetry 2) the ways in which these themes construct, disturb, contribute to and problematise the poetics of Latin literature. These currents will be dealt with in term one and term two respectively. The module will introduce and develop students’ understanding of hermeneutic tools for Latin literature like queer theory, trans theory, feminism and psychoanalysis.

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.

Each week will consist of a two-hour session, combining lecture and discussion elements in roughly equal measure.

Term one will cover encountering topics relating to sex, sexuality and gender in Latin literature. Topics on a weekly basis will include:
Heterosexuality? Deconstructing constructs;
Engendering genders: cis masculinity and cis femininity;
Changing genders: trans identities in the ancient world?;
Sexual deviants: tribas and cinaedus;
Teaching sex: Ovid’s erotodidaxis and its afterlives;
Fragile masculinity;
Sexuality and gender at the fringes;
Dirty Professions: Roman Sex Work in Literature.

Term two will cover the effect(s) of sex, sexuality and gender on Latin poetics, drawing attention to poetic (de)construction. Topics to include:
Verbalising sex: sexualised swearing;
Speaking the unspeakable: incest;
Showing sex: metaphor and material culture;
Warping narratives with bestiality;
Acrasis, sexuality and intertextuality;
Satire: drawing the lines of sex and gender;
Engendering genres;
Gay elegy: Ovid, Gallus and elegiac boys;
Queering Latin literature.

Those studying the module as a Latin text option will have an additional one-hour class per week discussing three texts: Seneca's Phaedra, Juvenal's Satire Six and excerpts from Book 9 of Ovid's Metamorphoses.

Learning outcomes

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

• Have a deeper understanding of Latin literary genre and poetic construction
• Have an appreciation of the conflicting and contradictory scholarship on matters sexual and gendered
• Have a deeper ability to engage critically with the ideas of secondary scholarship
• Have an increased awareness of the hermeneutic tools which scholars use to unpack Classical texts
• Be able to seek out appropriate secondary literature and show discernment in the types of primary evidence addressed.

Indicative reading list

Reading lists can be found in Talis

Subject specific skills

By the end of the module, all students should have:

• A deeper understanding of Latin literary genre and poetic construction
• An appreciation of the conflicting and contradictory scholarship on matters sexual and gendered
• A deeper ability to engage critically with the ideas of secondary scholarship
• An increased awareness of the hermeneutic tools which scholars use to unpack Classical texts
• The ability to seek out appropriate secondary literature and show discernment in the types of primary evidence addressed.

In addition, final year students will be able to show

• The ability to set their interpretations into a wider comparative context, drawing in other aspects of the study of the ancient world

Q800 students and students taking the Latin text option should have:

• An increased facility in reading Latin literature
• An understanding of how topics of sex, sexuality and gender impact Latin literature on the linguistic level

Transferable skills

leave these:

• critical thinking
• problem solving
• active lifelong learning
• communication
• information literacy
• professionalism