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Academic Year 2000/2001

Neoteric & Pastoral: Catullus' Longer Poems & Vergil's ECLOGUES
LAT 244 SP

This course will read in Latin two groups of fairly short poems (24-408 lines) written about 60-35 B.C.E. by Catullus and Vergil. The poems are important, interesting, and challenging and are in new and experimental forms. Catullus' longer poems (61-68) feature two marriage hymns (61-62), the self-mutilation of a religious fanatic (63), the masterful mini-epic on the wedding of Peleus and Thetis that also tells the story of Theseus and Ariadne (64) and the elegy on Catullus' lover, the Trojan War, and the death of his brother (68). Vergil's book of 10 hexameter Eclogues creates a pastoral world of song both removed from and still tied to the turmoil of Rome after the assassination of Julius Caesar. The poems deal with winners and losers in land confiscations, singing contests and master-singers, and the madness of love; the famous Fourth ECLOGUE draws heavily on Catullus 64 to predict the birth of a wonder-child who will usher in a Golden Age. We will read all of Catullus' longer poems and the ECLOGUES, studying each both as a self-contained work and as it relates to the others; we will also examine aspects of continuity and change from the neoteric poetry of Catullus to the earliest Augustan verse of Vergil. Topics of discussion will include questions of genre, gender, interpretation, allusion or intertextuality, irony or indeterminacy, and historical context.

MAJOR READINGS

Catullus, CARMINA Vergil, ECLOGUES

EXAMINATIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS

Translation-and-essay exam after each half of the course. Secondary readings in scholarship on the poems, with class reports. Early short paper (3-5 pp.). Final paper.

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS and/or COMMENTS

Four years high school Latin or 1 1/2 years college, or consult instructor. Class discussion and the quality of classroom translation will figure in the grade. Unless preregistered students attend the first class meeting or communicate directly with the instructor prior to the first class, they will be dropped from the class list. NOTE: Students must still submit a completed Drop/Add form to the Registrar's Office.

COURSE FORMAT: Lecture

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Level: UGRD    Credit: 1    Gen Ed Area Dept: HA CLAS    Grading Mode: Student Option   

Prerequisites: NONE Links to Web Resources For This Course.

Last Updated on MAR-26-2001

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