CLA/WLIT 196
Ancient Lyric Poetry

Greek Lyric Poetry, Author Presentation
 
The goal of this project is for you to absorb your chosen poet life and soul, and to present him or her to us, as though an intimate friend or past life experience. You can structure your time as you please, up to 1/2 hour. This time will go very quickly, especially if you do any reading of poems, or solicit feedback from other students, and so on. How much time will you spend on the poet's biography, as far as we can know it? How much can that be tied into the fragments, both those we are reading and any others? How much interpretive work do you want to do on the fragments we are all reading? Your grade will be based on how well you balance quantity and quality of information, entertainment value, and generally how much you put into it. I would leave four hours minimum for this project.

Some Possible Directions:

I am open to any sort of presentation, but you might consider the following directions:

1) Give us contexts for one or more of the poems we are reading

For fragmentary poets like the early Greek lyricists, our textbook gives only the poetic fragment itself, not the words of any quoting author. These are often crucial for understanding the poem. So a very good use of time would be to read all that. It is a quick, ready source of information that the rest of the class will not have.

2) Do you want to consider poems by your author which are not in our textbook?

Reading everything else that survives from a poet is a great way to get into his or her head. Our textbook is only a selection, for the most part the best preserved and most famous ones. But other interesting ones have been left out, including some fairly pornographic stuff, especially among the fragments of the early Greek poets

3) Biography

What do we know or not know about the life of the poet? You could read the ancient testimonies about the poet (in the Campbell volumes), passages which give outside information about the poet. Often ancient biographies were deduced entirely from the internal evidence of the poems, and so can be worthless guess-work. These two works may help you sort out the gold from the dross:

4) Ancient Opinion / Reception (Nachleben)

What did other ancients think of this poet? What was his or her influence? You might find stuff on this in a general study of the author. In the case of the early Greek lyricists you can also check the testimonies in Campbell and Gerber (see below).

5) Interpretation: literary, sociological, political, etc. Here too general studies of the author are the way to go.


*****

Where to find information:

Texts and translations
Sappho, Alcaeus: vol. 1 of Campbell, D. A., Greek lyric (Cambridge, Mass., 1982), 5 volumes PA3622 .C3 1982 884/.01/08. This is at the BH reserve desk.
Anacreon, Alman: Campbell vol. 2
Stesichorus, Ibycus, Simonides: Campbell vol. 3
Bacchylides: Campbell vol. 4
Empedocles: Kirk, G. S./Raven, J. E./Schofield, M., The Presocratic Philosophers (Cambridge, 1983).
Theognis, Solon, Tyrtaeus: Gerber, D. E., Greek elegiac poetry : from the seventh to the fifth centuries B.C (Cambridge, Mass., 1999). PA3623.E44 G75 1999. BH Reserve Desk

For all the other authors, Greek and Roman, who are not fragmentary, you will find various translations in BH by entering poet's name + English in BH search.

General interpretation and biography

First and foremost of course a direct search under the poet's name will turn up several studies at least for each poet.

Two basic reference works that may be useful, and lead to bibliographical recommendations, are:
Hornblower, S./Spawforth, A., The Oxford classical dictionary (Oxford ; New York, 2003). DE5 .O9 2003 938/.003 REFERENCE
Hornblower, S./Spawforth, A., The Oxford companion to classical civilization (Oxford England ; New York, 2003). DE5 .O94 2003 REFERENCE

Other useful classical reference works are in this same general area of REFERENCE. Also, BH has a few electronic resources for classics: http://library.uvm.edu/reference/index.html?code=classics&Submit=Go

For biography specifically, you might try:

Lefkowitz, M. R., The lives of the Greek poets (Baltimore, Md., 1981). PA3064 .L44 1981;
Schmidt, M., The first poets : lives of the ancient Greek poets (New York, 2005). PA3064 .S36 2005


*****

THE POETS

3/21 Archilochus: Warrior Poet.

3/23 Sappho (Alaina)

3/26 Alcaeus: revolution on Lesbos (Rachael)

3/28 War and Dancing in Sparta: Alcman  /Tyrtaeus

3/30 Solon: revolution in Athens

4/2 Love and Wine 1: Anacreon (Vinnie)

4/4 Love and Wine 2: Ibycus (Vanessa) / Theognis

4/9 Song and Sports 1: Bacchylides (Greg)

4/11 Song and Sports 2: Pindar (Courtney)

4/16 Simonides (Henry)

4/18 Callimachus: Librarian poet of Alexandria (Doug)

4/20 Theocritus: Pastoral Poetry (Chris A.)

4/23 Lucretius (Andrew) / Empedocles (Mark): Scientific Cosmogony

4/25 Catullus (Sarah)

4/27 Roman Love 1: Propertius (Eric)

4/30 Roman Love 2: Tibullus (Jesse)
Sulpicia (Laura M.)

5/2 Roman Love 3: Ovid (Matt)