History 506:401.09 Seminar: Ancient History, Modern Fiction & Poetry Fall 2006
Jack Cargill
Friday periods 2 & 3 (
Office: Van Dyck Hall 103
Office Phone: 732-932-6740
Office Hours: Tuesday
E-mail Address:
Website: http://fas-history.rutgers.edu/jcargill
Class Requirements: Mandatory attendance at FIRST meeting (Sep. 8), when class will be organized; regular attendance thereafter; in-class responsibilities for readings assigned to you (answer questions, make reports, etc.); Major Writing Project due near end of semester.
Books for all students to buy (ordered ONLY at New Jersey Books):
J. Cargill, Handbook for Ancient History Classes (Paige Press 1997)
Rae Dalven (trans.), The Complete Poems of Cavafy: Expanded Edition (Harvest Books 1976)*
*More
recent translations, e.g., those of Aliki Barnstone, Theoharis C. Theoharis, or
Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard (not Keeley’s The Essential C., but the more complete collection, either
bilingual hb or English-only pb), are equally acceptable, but I assign Dalven
because it is cheaper (some others exist only in hb) and I especially like its
phrasing; be aware that poem titles vary somewhat between translations (I will
use Dalven’s titles).
Other books may be purchased or borrowed from the library. In most weeks (see readings for various Weeks below), different students will be primarily responsible for being knowledgeable about different books. If you wish to buy (or check out) only books for which you are primarily responsible, wait until individual assignments are made, at the first meeting.
Locate titles and descriptions of in-print ancient-setting historical NOVELS through:
http://www.historical-novels.com/index.html
(Subdivided
geographically:
Locate biographies and bibliographies of individual WRITERS through links on above site, or by searching their names on websites such as:
www.Google.com
Locate specific BOOKS TO BUY through links on above sites or by searching authors’ names on, e.g.:
www.Amazon.com
Many books are available used, often VERY cheap!
POETRY online: “Googling” poets’ names will often lead to lists of published collections or to selected poems available online. I know of no website that focuses specifically on poems with ANCIENT settings (if you find one, please tell me!). Many poems (only a small proportion of them set in antiquity) are listed alphabetically by title on the unfortunately-named website:
http://plagiarist.com/poetry/list
Replacing “/list” with “/poets” calls up a large list of poets; clicking a name brings up the poet’s poems.
Many poets are also listed at:
http://www.poemhunter.com/p/t/l.asp?|=All
Replacing the elements after “.com” with “/classics” brings up a subset of “Classical Poets” (not solely ancient), alphabetized oddly by their first names (though some are by surnames!). Apparently the same list is at http://www.completeclassics.com
More than 144,000 poems (mostly not with ancient settings) are listed at:
http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/l.asp?|=All (= the analogous poets site with “m” replacing “t”).
One goal of this class – in which I ask for your help – is the compiling of a DATABASE of modern poems with ancient settings, which can be put on the Internet for the use of future students and instructors.
Meetings and
Assignments:
Week 1, Sep. 8 Organization of class; individual assignments (attendance mandatory)
Lecture: Short Course in Ancient History (Near Eastern, Greek, Roman)
Week 2, Sep. 15 Modern Classics on Ancient Classics
Read Plutarch, Theseus;
Coriolanus; Caesar; Brutus;
Read Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida; A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Coriolanus; Julius Caesar; Antony and Cleopatra online at: http://www-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare
VIDEO shown of George Bernard Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra (movie 1946)
Week 3, Sep. 22 Byron, Cavafy, and Other Modern Poets of Antiquity
Read ancient-setting poems in Byron’s Hebrew Melodies, available online at: http://www.mykeep.com/lordbyron/hebrewmelodies.html
Read ancient-setting poems in The Complete Poems of Cavafy (trans. Rae Dalven)
Other modern poets with many ancient-setting poems (Keats, Shelley, Yeats, Borges, etc.) may be individually assigned (or volunteered for)
Week 4, Sep.
29 Scholar
as Novelist of Ancient
Specific students will be assigned responsibility for each of the following Mary Renault novels (though I hope you will read more of them, and others besides): The Charioteer; The Last of the Wine; The King Must Die; The Persian Boy
Week 5, Oct. 6 Excursions into Antiquity by Novelists (Usually) of Modernity
Specific students will be assigned responsibility for each of the following novels (though I hope you will read more of them, and others besides): Norman Mailer, Ancient Evenings; Naguib Mahfouz, Akhenaten; James Michener, The Source; Thornton Wilder, The Ides of March; Robert Graves, I, Claudius or Claudius the God; Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian; Gore Vidal, Creation or Julian (plus possibly others, depending on class size)
Week 6, Oct. 13 The Roman (and Egyptian) Detective Novel
Specific students will be assigned responsibility for one or more novels (though I hope you will read more of them, and others besides) by Lauren Haney, Lynda S. Robinson, Stephen Saylor, or Lindsey Davis (and possibly Paul Doherty, John Maddox Roberts, David Wishart, or others); find titles on historical-novels website
Week 7, Oct. 20 Tinkering with Antiquity, Especially with the Bible
Specific students will be assigned responsibility for each of the following novels (though I hope you will read more of them, and others besides): Joseph Heller, God Knows; Norman Mailer, The Gospel According to the Son; Robert Graves, King Jesus; Christopher Moore, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal; Gore Vidal, Live from Golgotha; Irving Wallace, The Word; Steven Sherrill, The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break (and possibly others, but NOT The DaVinci Code: see the movie)
Week 8, Oct. 27 Ancient Women’s Perspectives, I: Earlier
Specific students will be assigned responsibility for one each of the following novels (though I hope you will read more of them, and others besides): Christa Wolf, Cassandra or Medea; Sarah Franklin, Daughter of Troy; Matthew L. Hunter, Jason and Medea; Steven Pressfield, Last of the Amazons; Anita Diamant, The Red Tent; India Edghill, Queenmaker; Eleanor Ferris Beach, The Jezebel Letters; Naguib Mahfouz, Rhadopis of Nubia; Christian Jacq, Flaming Sword or The War of the Crowns; Irene Roberts, Kingdom of the Sun
Week 9, Nov. 3 Wars of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon in Fiction
Specific students will be assigned responsibility for one each of the following novels (though I hope you will read more of them, and others besides): Gene Wolfe, Soldier of the Mist; Steven Pressfield, Gates of Fire or Tides of War; Jon Edward Martin, In Kithairon’s Shadow; Ellen Gilchrist, Anabasis; Peter Carnahan, Pharnabazus Sits on the Grass with the Spartan Captains; Michael Curtis Ford, The Ten Thousand (of course Mary Renault’s The Last of the Wine fits here too)
Week 10, Nov. 10 Turn in BIBLIOGRAPHY for Writing Project
(will be returned with corrections and suggestions)
Ancient Women’s Perspectives, II: Later
Specific students will be assigned responsibility for one each of the following novels (though I hope you will read more of them, and others besides): Peter Green, The Laughter of Aphrodite; Erica Jong, Sappho’s Leap; Ellen Frye, The Other Sappho; William Golding, The Double Tongue; Judith Tarr, Queen of the Amazons; Duncan Sprott, The Ptolemies; Gustave Flaubert, Salammbo; Howard Fast, Agrippa’s Daughter; Haley Elizabeth Garwood, Zenobia; Evelyn Waugh, Helena; Harold Lamb, Theodora and the Emperor; Charles Kingsley, Hypatia
Week 11, Nov. 17 ROUGH DRAFTS of Writing Projects due (penalized for lateness)
More poetry (lecture and readings by instructor); suggested: Jane Rawlings, The Penelopeia
(Friday classes theoretically meet on Wed., Nov. 22, but students will be free that week to work on their projects; no meeting as a class)
Week 12, week of Dec. 1 Pick up Rough Drafts in my office at some point during the week (I will provide a schedule shortly beforehand); meet Friday only long enough to discuss common problems.
Week 13, Dec. 8 FINAL VERSIONS of Writing Projects due (along with re-submitted ROUGH DRAFTS and Student Evaluation forms), in office, during time class would normally meet (penalized for lateness)
Tuesday, Dec. 12, office hour (