| Unit name | Antiquity and Modernity |
|---|---|
| Unit code | CLAS32350 |
| Credit points | 40 |
| Level of study | H/6 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
| Unit director | Professor. Michelakis |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Pre-requisites |
None |
| Co-requisites |
None |
| School/department | Department of Classics & Ancient History |
| Faculty | Faculty of Arts, Law and Social Sciences |
Modernity has often been contrasted with classicism. In the arts, there has been concerted striving for novelty and the rejection of traditional artistic forms as inadequate and stultifying. In other areas of life, a sense has developed that the quality of existence in the modern world is fundamentally different from that of earlier periods, which explains why traditional forms of artistic expression have been felt to be inadequate. And yet some of the key theorists of modern culture, whose ideas helped not only to delineate but also to shape cultural activity in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, were heavily indebted to the ideas and culture of classicism. This unit will focus on the work of a number of these thinkers, particularly Schiller, Marx, Wagner, Nietzsche and Freud, discussing antiquitys importance for them and the impact of their ideas on art, music and drama.
