CLST 384 - The Humanism of Antiquity II

CLST 384: The Humanism of Antiquity II

Spring Semester 2014

Thursday, 4:15pm-6:45pm
Sullivan Center 202
Dr. Jacqueline Long

Aeneas panel, Ara Pacis Augustae, Rome, 13-9 BC

Study Guide

Know the basic literary-historical facts of each author and work we've studied:

dates
- birth
- death
- publication of major works - both the one(s) we've studied and the others for which the author is especially known
- be able to set the writer and the texts in relationship to what was happening in the Roman world at the time the writer wrote them
identities of the extant major works
- title or other standard term of reference
- date of publication
- genre (literary species)
- significant distinctive concerns of the work
- be able to set the works we've studied in relationship to the writer's overall literary production
characteristic elements of the genres to which the works we've studied belong
- form (prose/poetry, meter, etc)
- characteristic topics
- characteristic manner of handling topics
- characteristic tone
- be able to identify the expectations with which the authors' first readers could have approached the text in question
salient literary-artistic concerns of the works we've studied
- be able to explain how the writer chose to respond to the challenge of writing within specific literary traditions and audience expectations: how do the writer's distinctive aims in the work relate to his first readers' understanding of his literary form?
background
- dates
- social, political, religious, or other connections of the author
- contemporary or recent events of concern to the author
- cultural concerns and intellectual interests of the author
- be able to set the writer and the texts in relationship to what was happening in the Roman world and what readers were caring about at the time the writer wrote them

Know the basic information conveyed in ancillary discussions and reading, understand how it relates to our central study of major texts, and be able to identify and explain pertinent connections:

Renaissance Humanism and the development of Classical Studies
New Comedy (as opposed to Aristophanic Old Comedy) and Greek and Italian traditions of comic performance related to Roman Comedy
Rhetoric in the Classical World
Alexandrian literature and Roman Alexandrianism
Roman art (selected topics)
Roman history (Potter and lecture)

Finally, furthest-reaching and deepest, consider the most interesting and important ways in which each work we've studied casts light on the Centering Questions:

review your own notes from reading or re-reading the texts (SQ3R for Primary-Source Coursework)
review your mini-essays, including feedback returned to you with them
review your notes covering class discussions
review summary-notes distributed by your classmates and/or posted on Sakai
follow up interesting questions by re-reading and thinking further - what additional connections can you draw now that you've read and we've discussed the rest of the semester's material, beyond what you observed as we were working through it earlier?
identify specific passages you could use to illustrate significant concerns of the individual work, and be ready to explain what is significant about them
- what do they illustrate about the way the work treats ideas about the human person, human nature, and human relationships with the self, with other humans, with the natural world, and with the transcendent?
- how do they relate to the work as a whole?
- how do they relate to the author's literary production as a whole?
- how do they relate to other works we've studied that share similar concerns or with which you would contrast the work?
identify specific passages you could use to illustrate significant concerns of the literary form (genre) of which the individual work is an example, and be ready to explain what is characteristic and significant about them
- what do they illustrate about the way the work treats ideas about the human person, human nature, and human relationships with the self, with other humans, with the natural world, and with the transcendent?
- how do they relate to the individual work?
- how do they relate to the literary tradition as a whole?
- how do they relate to other literary traditions we've studied that share similar concerns or with which you would contrast the work?
identify specific passages you could use to illustrate significant concerns of the period of Roman history the work was written in and/or about, and be ready to explain what is characteristic and significant about them
- what do they illustrate about the way the work treats ideas about the human person, human nature, and human relationships with the self, with other humans, with the natural world, and with the transcendent?
- how do they relate to the individual work?
- how do they relate to events and preoccupations of the period?
- how do they relate to the broader trajectory of Roman history and Classical culture?
identify specific passages you could use to illustrate significant concerns of Classical Greek and Roman culture, and be ready to explain what is characteristic and significant about them
- what do they illustrate about the way the work treats ideas about the human person, human nature, and human relationships with the self, with other humans, with the natural world, and with the transcendent?
- how do they relate to the individual work?
- how do they relate to uses other civilizations and cultures have made of Classical culture?

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Revised 14 April 2014 by jlong1@luc.edu
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