| Unit name | Time, Temporality and Texts |
|---|---|
| Unit code | CLASM1012 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | M/7 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
| Unit director | Professor. Liveley |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Pre-requisites |
None |
| Co-requisites |
None |
| School/department | Department of Classics & Ancient History |
| Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
Time is one of the basic categories of human experience, but is peculiarly subject to cultural construction. In particular, our differing senses of time are encapsulated in the stories we tell. In this unit, as well as looking at the ways in which time has been conceptualized, past and present, we shall be examining a variety of texts, visual as well as written, ‘modern’ as well as ‘ancient’, to see how different types of writing and representation at different periods play with notions of time (speeding it up, slowing it down, even reversing it) and with the human experience of time to create different effects (e.g. inevitability, irony, suspense, pathos). Therefore we shall be looking at ancient epic, tragedy, historiography and philosophy and in more recent treatments of time in the novel, film and in ‘counterfactual’ history.
Further Information: Reading List: Homer, Odyssey (Lattimore tr.) Sophocles, Oedipus the King (Fagles tr.) Virgil, Aeneid (Penguin, West tr.) Augustine, Confessions 8 and 11 (Chadwick, tr.) Selections from Aristotle, Livy, Hesiod Saul Morson, G. Narrative and Freedom: The Shadows of Time (New Haven and London, 1994) A selection of other set texts will be made available via blackboard
