Schedule of Assignments

Week 1

Monday, January 26: Welcome and Introduction

Wednesday, January 28: Introduction to Greek Myth and the Modern Study of Myth
Reading: Harris & Platzner (HP) chapters 1 & 2
Questions: 1) HP identify some important differences between the major religions of the modern world and the practices and beliefs of the ancient Greeks. What are they? 2) What are the major periods of Greek history? What sources of myth are characteristic of each? What are some of the problems with these sources? 3) How do HP define the concept “myth”? How would you?

Friday, January 30: Overview of the Olympian Gods, Etiological Myths
Reading: HP, “Myth and Etiology,” 45, and 179-221
Questions: Find an example of an etiological myth. Be prepared to identify the major gods and their particular characteristics. Bring any questions you have on the quiz items.

Week 2

Monday, February 2: Homer’s Iliad
Reading: Skim HP 367-87, read HP 388-459
Questions: What is the Trojan War about? What is the Iliad about? How is a man defined or evaluated within the epic?

Wednesday, February 4: Homer’s Odyssey
Reading: Skim HP 460-82, read HP 483-539
Questions: How is Odysseus’ story similar to and different from Achilles’? Who is civilized in the Odyssey? How are characters defined as civilized or not? Why?

Friday, February 6: Orality - Literacy
Reading: Schmitz 1-13, 98-111
Questions: 1) What did you find difficult to understand in this chapter? What did you find particularly interesting? How could these ideas be applied to our study of myth? 2) What are some of the key characteristics of an oral society, and can you find evidence of these in the Homeric epics or in the conditions under which they were performed?

Week 3

Monday, February 9: Lecture: Early Comparative and Universalist Approaches, Theories of the Origins of Myths
Quiz on People, Places and Events in Greek History

Wednesday, February 11: Hesiod’s Theogony: The Origin of the Gods
Reading: Skim HP 61-87, read HP 88-105
Questions: Be prepared to generate a brief outline of the narrative within the poem. Why does Hesiod make Zeus a third generation god? How do we know Zeus will not be overthrown like his forefathers? What is Hesiod’s major purpose in composing the Theogony?

Friday, February 13: Hesiod on Man, Woman and Fire
Reading: HP 129-134, 106-119
Questions: What role do the Prometheus and Pandora stories play within the larger narrative of the Theogony? (The versions of their stories within Hesiod’s other poem, Works and Days, may help work this out.) What is the narrative role of the poetic speaker, Hesiod?

Week 4

Monday, February 16: Theory of the Great Goddess, Social Anthropology: Functionalism
Reading: HP 145-54, Eric Csapo, “Social Anthropology,” in Theories of Mythology, 2005, 132-45 (e-reserve)
Questions: 1) What do you make of the theory of the great goddess? What previous course material does it bring to mind? 2) How is the approach of Durkheim and Malinowski fundamentally different from their comparativist predecessors? How would Malinowski approach the Theogony? What is the function of comparativist theories of the origins of Greek myths? Of the Odyssey?

Wednesday, February 18: Heroes: Perseus, Heracles, Theseus and Jason
Reading: HP chapter 10
Questions: 1) Is there a basic pattern for a hero story? If so, what? Why? What other stories we have read fit this pattern? What is lost in focusing on the pattern as opposed to the individual variations? 2) What sociological function might be filled by any or all of these hero stories?

Friday, February 20: Cultural Anthropology
Reading: Victor Turner, “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage” Proceedings of the American Ethnological Association, 1964, 4-20 (e-reserve)
Questions: 1) What is Van Gennep’s concept of a rite of passage, and how does Turner refine it? What would be an example from your own life? 2) How might we make use of these ideas in interpreting hero stories? Where in his account does Turner imagine myths being told as part of a rite of passage? What function do they serve?

Week 5

Monday, February 23: Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Lecture on Formalism
Reading: Skim HP 156-66, read the Hymn to Demeter, 167-78
Questions: What approaches that we have studied so far may be brought to bear productively on the myth of Demeter and Persephone? What do these theories fail to take account of that is important in the story or its telling?

Wednesday, February 25: Structuralism
Reading: Schmitz 26-42; Eric Csapo, “Mediation” in Theories of Mythology, 2005, 226-29 (e-mail)
Questions: How do structuralist thinkers break from their predecessors? What are Saussure’s core ideas? How does Lévi-Strauss apply these notions about language to myths? Be ready to explain the terms diachronic vs. synchronic, paradigmatic vs. syntagmatic at both the level of the sentence and at the level of the narrative. How would Lévi-Strauss approach the story of Demeter?

Friday, February 27: Dionysus
Reading: HP 266-91
Questions: How would a paradigmatic structuralist approach the stories about Dionysus? What function did these stories serve?

Week 6

Monday, March 2: Structural Classicists: Jean-Pierre Vernant and Marcel Detienne
Reading: Eric Csapo, “Structure and Ideology” in Theories of Mythology, 2005, 262-76 (e-mail)
Questions: What do you find most difficult to understand in this analysis of myth and gender roles? What is most intriguing? What do you think about the totality of this ideological system – are myth, culture and language this deterministic? Is there no possibility of subversion or resistance?

Tuesday, March 3: Draft of First Paper Due by 5pm 

Wednesday, March 4: The House of Laius
Reading: Read HP 646-65
Questions: Which approaches that we have studied so far are most productively brought to bear on the study of Oedipus and his family? What do these approaches fail to take account of? Where are they lacking?

Friday, March 6: Psychoanalysis
Reading: Schmitz 195-202; Richard Caldwell, “The Psychoanalytic Interpretation of Greek Myth” in Approaches to Greek Myth, L. Edmunds, ed., 1990, 342-89 (e-reserve)
Questions: What are the basic tenets of Freudian analysis? What does the introduction of Freudian psychology add to the structuralist interpretation of the Oedipus story? Do you find Caldwell’s analysis compelling? Why or why not? What is still lacking in our study of these stories?

Week 7

Monday, March 9: Deconstruction and Foucault
Reading: Schmitz 113-39, 140-57
Quesitons: What are the basic tenets of deconstruction? What are the implications for our study of Greek myths? Of the Oedipus story? Which ideas may be useful to us? Describe Foucault’s intellectual relationship to deconstructionism and structuralism. What do you find particularly intriguing or difficult about his ideas? Where might they be useful for the study of myth? Of Oedipus?

Wednesday, March 11: New Historicism and Ideological Analysis
Reading: Schmitz 159-74, Eric Csapo, “New Uses for Old Methods” and “An Ideological Analysis of the Myth of Heracles” in Theories of Mythology, 2005, 296-315 (e-mail)
Questions: 1) What is the relationship between New Historicism, deconstruction, Foucault and other intellectual precursors? What is particularly new about New Historicism? How might these ideas or methods be useful in our study of Greek myths? Of Dionysus? 2) Csapo puts together a number of different poststructural approaches under the general heading “ideological analysis.” From this brief reading, what are the intellectual connections between this, New Historicism and Foucault? What do you make of Csapo’s analysis of Heracles? How does it speak to the New Historicist debate over dominant ideology and the possibility of subversion?

Friday, March 13: Poststructural Analysis of the Odyssey
Reading: Odyssey, book 9 (e-reserve)
Questions: Analyze the beginning of Odysseus’ story to the Phaeacians using as many different theoretical approaches as you can.
First Paper Due by 5pm

Week 8 ~ March 16-20 ~ Spring Break ~ No Classes

Week 9

Monday, March 23: Introduction to Classical Athens and Attic Tragedy
Reading: HP chapter 14
Lecture in class on Athenian history

Wednesday, March 25: Aeschylus’ Agamemnon
Reading: HP 576-607
Questions: What theoretical approaches might be productively brought to bear on the Agamemnon? Why is Aeschylus (re)telling this story? How have the Iliad and Odyssey versions of Agamemnon’s story been transformed? How is this play a product of the Athenian democracy?

Friday, March 27: Aeschylus’ Eumenides
Reading: HP 621-644
Questions: How does reading the third play in the trilogy change your interpretation of the Agamemnon? What potential ideological conflicts do you find expressed here and/or in other stories about Orestes? What other theoretical approaches might be productively utilized here?

Week 10

Monday, March 30: Euripides’ Bacchae
Reading: HP 817-870
Questions: Is this play pro-religion or anti-religion? How does it help explain why drama was performed in honor of Dionysus? What theoretical approaches might be productively brought to bear on the Bacchae?

Wednesday, April 1: Feminist Approaches/Gender Studies
Reading: Schmitz 202-4, 176-93
Questions: What intellectual connections can you perceive between the ideas of the feminist scholars presented, the debates they generate, and the theorists/theories we discussed earlier? How do the plays by Aeschylus and Euripides illustrate the ideas put forth by Froma Zeitlin and Laura McClure? How would Judith Butler approach the Bacchae?

Friday, April 3: No Class

Week 11

Monday, April 6: Sappho
Reading: Selections of Sappho’s Poetry (e-mail)
Questions: How might some of the feminist thinkers described by Schmitz approach Sappho’s poetry and use of myth? Why does HP include no ancient texts by women? What should we make of Sappho’s sexuality? How might her work be brought to bear on the debate about dominant ideology and the possibility of resistance?

Wednesday, April 8: Student Tragedy Performances

Friday, April 10: Student Tragedy Performances

Discussion Questions on American Uses of Greek Myth:

Of what discourses are the following cultural productions a part? Consider not only political movements, but cultural trends and even the 20^th century intellectual debates we have been discussing. How does the use of or reference to ancient Greek myth further the goals of the piece within those discourses? Why is someone telling that story?

Week 12

 Monday, April 13: Rita Dove’s The Darker Face of the Earth (e-mail)

Wednesday, April 15: Lecture: Classics in Western European Culture & Society

** Thursday Evening, April 16, 7pm: Showing of Episodes of Xena and Hercules

Friday, April 17: Television: Xena Warrior Princess and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys

Week 13

Monday, April 20: Selected 20^th Century American Prose and Poetry (e-mail)

Discussion Questions on Roman Uses of Greek Myth:

What approaches that you have studied in this class or elsewhere, or read for today, prove useful in evaluating the myth or myths? What interpretations of the myth(s) do they bring you to? Why is a Roman telling this Greek story? Should we consider this a religious document, literature, what?

Wednesday, April 22: Introduction to Augustan Rome

Friday, April 24: Vergil’s Aeneid
Reading: Skim HP 892-908, read excerpts books 1 & 2 (HP 909-36)
Last day to submit rough draft of second paper (by 5pm)

Week 14

Monday, April 27: Vergil’s Aeneid & Intertextuality
Reading: HP 936-75, Schmitz 77-85

Wednesday, April 29: Ovid’s Metamorphoses
Reading: Skim HP 976-83, read excerpts book 1 (984-97)

Friday, May 1: Ovid’s Metamorphoses & Reader Response Criticism
Reading: HP 997-1015, Schmitz 86-96

Week 15

Monday, May 4: Last Day Wrap Up, Paper Due in Class

Friday, May 8, 10:30am - 12:30pm: Final Exam

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