Not offered 2007-2008
CLAS 224 Helen, Desire and Language (Same as Comparative Literature 244 and Women's and Gender Studies 224) (W)
When Homer's Iliad introduces us to "Helen of Troy," she is a perfectly beautiful and baleful cause of the Trojan War and, simultaneously, among its most sympathetic and innocent victims. In her struggle to be a desiring agent and not simply the passive screen onto which others project their own desires, Helen stands both inside the narrative, as a character created by it, and outside, as a commentator on the story and her own role in it. Through Helen as much as any other character, the Iliad explores the relation between logos and eros. Because Helen remains a key figure in Greek discourse of language and desire, and of death, loss, memory, repetition and substitution, we will focus on texts in which Helen figures prominently, including the Iliad and Odyssey, lyric poems by Sappho, Alcaeus, and Steisichorus, Aeschylus's Oresteia, Euripides's Helen, and Gorgias' Encomium of Helen, and we will consider Helen in the graphic arts and religious cults. We will also venture into texts and arenas where Helen herself is not prominent or even mentioned but where thematics familiar from stories involving her are at play, e.g. Hesiod on the Muses, Pandora, Aphrodite, and Metis, several tragedies by Sophocles and Euripides, the Athenian cult of Persuasion, women's roles in familial and communal cults, and (if time permits) Plato's Symposium or Phaedrus.
Among the questions we will ask: Why do discussions of logos regularly become discussions of eros, and vice-versa? Why do "feminine" activities-weaving, storing and preparing food, bearing children, caring for the dead-and why do traits particularly associated in Greek culture with females-lying and seductiveness, for instance-figure prominently in the discourse of logos and eros? Does this discourse engender as "feminine" poets, texts, and characters who, like Achilles and Odysseus as well as Helen, become "poets" within the texts that have created them? Where is "masculinity" located in this discourse?
Format: discussion with some short lectures. Requirements: active participation in class discussion, one or two oral presentations, several shorter papers and a longer final paper (more than 20 pages total). Students may devise a final paper involving later literature either about Helen or otherwise relevant to the issues in this course.
No prerequisites. Enrollment limit: 19 (expected: 10). Preference will be given to students who have previously studied some of the literature being read and to majors in Classics, Comparative Literature, Literary Studies, English and other literatures and in Women's and Gender Studies.