Introductory description

What is Greek lyric poetry? What are its powers, its claims, its purposes? How does it sing or speak? What are its effects? Who are its most significant and celebrated practitioners, and how best should we appreciate their works? What is distinctive about Greek lyric: as a form of cultural expression, as genre, literary form, a body of texts, a set of voices, as emotional content? How might we model its relations with other social and cultural aspects of archaic and classical Greece, such as religion, performance, politics, sexuality, sport? How should we conceptualize it, in relation to broader categories such as song / rhythm / meter / music / literature / rhetoric / history? How do we, should we, can we relate to its intensities of emotional expression, its modes of address, its uses of myth and imagery, its attitudes to materiality, its sense of its own time, and its contextualizations? What, even, might we learn about Classics, as an idea, from thinking about Greek lyric?
This module is also available to undergraduates from other departments, subject to the agreement of the Classics Department and their home department.

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.

Primary Texts to be studied in translation:
(prescribed translations are West (OUP) and Carson, If Not, Winter for Sappho; supplemented –
via course extracts – by excerpts from Nisetich for Pindar, Victory Odes; Race for Pindar,
fragments; and Campbell (Loeb) for Bacchylides and Timotheus: further details below in §21)
Archilochus, fragments; Stesichorus, fragments; Sappho, fragments 1, 2, 16, 31, 55, 96, 105a plus
New Sappho fragments published since 2009; Alcaeus fragments 326, 332, 333, 350, 357; Ibycus
fragments 282a (=S151), 286; Anacreon fragments 357, 358, 359, 395, 413, 417; Simonides
fragments 531, 543, 581; Bacchylides Ode 5 and fragment 20B; Pindar, Olympians 1 and 6,
Pythians 1 and 8, Nemean 8, Paean 9, and fragment 123; Timotheus, Persae.

Primary Texts, Original Greek (for Q800/Q801)
Knowledge of all the above in translation, plus specific knowledge of the following in the original
Greek:
Stesichorus, Geryoneis fr. 19 lines 31–47; Sappho fragments 1, 2, 16, 31, 55, 96, 105a, plus New
Sappho Tithonus poem (fragment 58); Alcaeus fragments 326, 332, 333, 350, 357; Ibycus
fragments 282a (=S151) and 286; Anacreon fragments 357, 358, 359, 395, 413, 417; Simonides
fragments 531, 543, 581; Bacchylides Ode 5; Pindar, Olympian 1, Nemean 8, Paean 9, and
fragment 123.

Indicative outline of lectures/seminars:
TERM 1
GREEK LYRIC 1. POETS AND POEMS: QUESTIONS OF FORM, COORDINATES FOR INTERPRETATION
Week 1. Orientation; Sappho 1: ‘One More Time’: an introduction to Sapphic poetics
Week 2. Sappho 2: distance and consolation
Week 3. Alcaeus: sympotic groups, poetry and politics, sympotic attitudes
Week 4. Stesichorus: myth, narrative, ornamentation, interpretability
Week 5. Archilochus, Ibycus, Anacreon: praise, blame, identities, subjectivities
Week 6. READING WEEK - NO LECTURES/CLASSES
Week 7. Simonides and Bacchylides: lyric form, praise, history, contexts, reception
Week 8. Pindar 1: myths and contexts (including discussion of Olympian 1 as case study)
Week 9. Pindar 2: voices and attitudes (including discussion of Nemean 8 as case study)
Week 10. Timotheus’ Persae and the New Music

TERM 2
GREEK LYRIC 2. LYRIC AND…: CONNECTIONS TO BROADER CRITICAL-THEORETICAL ISSUES
Week 1. Lyric and Desire: lack, loss, intensity, affect
Week 2. Lyric and Time: topicalities, transcendence, and ‘the lyric now’
Week 3. Lyric, Rhetoric, and Exemplarity: classical scholarship, the New Criticism, and
Deconstruction
Week 4. Lyric and Fiction: ‘the lyric event’ and contemporary theory
Week 5. Lyric and Nature: the ethics of imagery
Week 6. READING WEEK - NO LECTURES/CLASSES
Week 7. Lyric and Gender: Sappho revisited (again); skills workshop for extended essay-writing.
Week 8. Lyric and Performance: literarity, anthropology, ritual
Week 9. Lyric and Sound: auditory aesthetics, rhythm, and music (focus on Sappho, Pindar, Timotheus) Week 10. Lyric and Art: comparative interdisciplinarities (including relations with archaic and classical Greek material culture, and also coverage of lyric reception in Cy Twombly) TERM 3 Week 1. Thematic Overviews in relation to close-reading Week 2. Exam Preparation: close-reading techniques and resources Week 3. Exam Preparation: practical close-reading workshops

Learning outcomes

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

• a broad understanding of the major poems and fragments of Greek lyric poetry, and their relevance for a range of issues pertinent to Classical literary study, including ancient socio-cultural significance (politics, sport, patronage, religion, sympotic lifestyle, sexuality), and contributions to broader debates in critical theory and classical reception.
• the ability to discuss connections between the poetic form and content of Greek lyric and their interpretative contexts in antiquity; the history of scholarship; and the pertinence of modern critical-theoretical perspectives.
• developed skills in close reading of literary texts, whether in translation, or in the original Greek (for Q800/Q801 students).
• gained awareness of comparative dimensions in the study of ancient Greek literature, culture, and thought.
• developed the ability to set their findings into a wider comparative context, drawing in other aspects of the study of the ancient world;
• engaged creatively with a wider range of secondary literature that includes discussion of classical literature within broader comparative, including critical-theoretical, frames.

Indicative reading list

Reading lists can be found in Talis

Subject specific skills

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

• a broad understanding of the major poems and fragments of Greek lyric poetry, and their relevance for a range of issues pertinent to Classical literary study, including ancient socio-cultural significance (politics, sport, patronage, religion, sympotic lifestyle, sexuality), and contributions to broader debates in critical theory and classical reception;
• the ability to discuss connections between the poetic form and content of Greek lyric and their interpretative contexts in antiquity; the history of scholarship; and the pertinence of modern critical-theoretical perspectives;
• developed skills in close reading of literary texts, whether in translation, or in the original Greek (for Q800/Q801 students);
• gained awareness of comparative dimensions in the study of ancient Greek literature, culture, and thought;
• developed the ability to set their findings into a wider comparative context, drawing in other aspects of the study of the ancient world;
• engaged creatively with a wider range of secondary literature that includes discussion of classical literature within broader comparative, including critical-theoretical, frames.

Transferable skills

• Communication
• Information Literacy
• Critical Thinking