Undergraduate Course: Amor and Roma: Latin love-elegy (LATI10035)
Course Outline
| School | School of History, Classics and Archaeology |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 3 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | To read Roman love-elegy is to experience one of the liveliest, most socially-engaged, and provocative literary genres of the Augustan Age written by some of its most celebrated poets: Propertius (c. 50 - 10 BC), Tibullus (c. 55 - 18 BC), and Ovid (43 BC - AD 17). This course aims to equip students to become effective readers of elegy, cognizant of the origins, style and conventions of the genre, of its individual authors and texts, and of the social and political contexts of the early Empire of which it is the product, but which it also constructs and interrogates. In this way, alongside guided reading of the primary texts and secondary scholarship, students will be encouraged to explore how, and with what implications, the elegiac genre experiments and innovates, in particular by expanding its thematic confines outwards from the private world of amor to the public world of Roma. Elegy requires readers at all levels of engagement to confront the issues to be addressed in this course, which will therefore complement both its organiser's primary area of research (from which it directly arises) and many other modules in Classics which the students will study over the course of their degree. |
| Course description |
1. Introduction
2. Elegiac tropes, conventions and generic composition
3. Poetics: the recusatio; the mistress as metaphor
4. Amor and mors
5. The Law and Violence
6. Elegiac narratives
7. Politics and Patronage
8. Intertextuality and intratextuality
9. Reinventing elegy (Propertius 4)
10. Aetiological elegy
11. Material text and the Poetry Book
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | Visiting students should usually have at least 3 courses in Classics related subject matter (at least 2 of which should be in Latin) at grade B or above (or be predicted to obtain this) for entry to this course. We will only consider University/College level courses but Elementary or Intermediate Latin courses will not count.
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Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
- knowledge of the principal features of Roman elegy (specifically its authors and texts, language and style, origins and development, conventions and themes)
- the ability to translate elegy confidently, to comment critically and incisively on passages selected with a degree of unpredictability, and to relate these to the wider generic framework
- a critical understanding of the principal approaches to elegy, and how these have changed and developed over time (e.g., philological, literary-critical, 'new historical', gendered, intertextual)
- a detailed knowledge of how elegy reflects the contexts (especially literary and sociopolitical) in which it was produced
- the ability to apply suitable specialist methodologies to reading elegy, and to evolve coherent and well-researched written and oral interpretations of the text on topics chosen with a degree of upredictability
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
- the ability to review critically and to consolidate knowledge and skills in a given area
- the ability to identify, define and analyse complex concepts
- written and verbal communication skills
- the ability to digest large quantities of textual material
- time-management skills
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| Keywords | Latin Love-Elegy |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Donncha O'Rourke
Tel: (0131 6)50 3771
Email: Donncha.ORourke@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Ms Elaine Hutchison
Tel: (0131 6)50 3582
Email: E.Hutchison@ed.ac.uk |
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