CLAS 104 Greek Literature and Myth (Same as Literary Studies 224) (Not offered 1999-2000)
This course examines recurrent narrative patterns in some of the Greek stories that have continued to exert enormous influence in the literature, graphic arts, and speculative discourses of European and American cultures and occasionally of cultures in Africa and Asia. We will ask why we can always recognize "the myth" of an Oedipus or Pandora even though no "Greek myth" has ever been told the same way twice. We will seek an answer to this question by exploring the dynamics of story-telling and story-hearing, two aspects of the same process. While considering ways in which we tell stories, stories tell stories, and stories tell us, we will trace some strands in the web of narrative, among them: the problem of beginnings (the beginnings of the cosmos, the gods, humans, sacrifice); patterns of differentiation, opposition, and compli(e)mentarity (god/human, human/beast, male/female, boy/vigorous man/old man, virgin/wife and mother/old woman, and especially eris/eros); cunning intelligence, the circle, and the bond; marriage as death for a woman, and adolescent male initiation as rebirth from the father; various folktale patterns informing the stories of gods and heroes; the pattern of withdrawal, devastation and return. Readings from Hesiod, Homer, Sappho, Greek tragedy, Plato, Ovid and Genesis will be supplemented by readings in anthropology, structuralism, psychoanalysis and feminism. We may also read some modern tellings of Greek myths and/or some myths from very different cultures, for purposes of comparative analysis; in any case, students will be encouraged to write papers in these areas. Evaluation will be based on class participation, two papers, and a final exam. A creative project may be substituted for one of the papers. Not open to students who have taken ArtH/Classics 213. Enrollment limited to 50. Satisfies one semester of Division I.