Unit name | Time, Temporality and Texts |
---|---|
Unit code | CLAS37019 |
Credit points | 20 |
Level of study | H/6 |
Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12) |
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 our human experience, but is peculiarly subject to cultural construction. In this unit we look at the ways in which time has been theorized, conceptualized, and represented in texts past and present. We will see how different types of writing and representation play with time (speeding it up, slowing it down, reversing it) and will explore how the human experience of time maps on to different effects (inevitability, irony, suspense, pathos). We will take time to read ancient epic, tragedy, historiography and philosophy – alongside novels such as Martin Amis’ Time’s Arrow, George Orwell’s 1984, films such as Christopher Nolan’s Memento, and counterfactual histories such as SS-GB.
On successful completion of this unit, students should:
1 x 2 hour seminar and 1 x 1 hour seminar per week
One essay of 3,000 words (50%) and one examination of 2 hours (50%).
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)