amimetobios

The first part of this class was lost -- some glitch with the iPhone.  But it was essentially an introduction to the issues continued in the part that starts here: the differences between the Iliad and the Odyssey in the kind of hero being depicted, and the goals of that hero, and especially how those differences are brought out in the various fates of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, Menelaus and Helen, and finally Odysseus and Penelope.   Female characters.  Hospitality depicted with respect to the suitors and the travelers.  The nested narratives of the Odyssey.

The psychology of anger: its expressive drive.  Anger acknowledges that it is self-defeating, and wants that acknowledgment to be expressive.  "The fact that I am angry, when I know that self-restraint and not anger will command the respect I am justly owed, shows how angry I am at the injustice of the disrespect my anger aggravates."  Anger as a social mode, a communicative relationship between people: so Homer always represents it as occurring within societies: Achaian, Trojan, Olympian.  So that Achilleus's anger at Hektor, his refusal to treat with him, is itself a modality of social interaction, disguised as the rejection of social interaction.  Hence the acceptance of Priam's supplication, and Blanchot's "parole sublime": "Now you and I must remember our supper" (24.601).

Dryden as a strenuous advocate of the middle way.  Relation of the interpretation of sacred texts to that of poetry.  The expertise that thinking poetically, in particularly about poetic form, can claim on matters of politics, theology, and philosophy.  Right and wrong ways of interpreting, and the extent to which interpretation is by its nature an appeal to the community norms that the interpreted works themselves have in view.  The hermeneutic circle: how do you time flies? (The way you time arrows!)

Again a somewhat delayed attack on Books 6 and 9 of the Iliad.  Syncretism and varieties of divine power considered.  Foreshadowing of the deaths of Patroklos and Hektor.  Beginning of discussion of Homeric epithets.  Set-ups of the climactic scenes: Honor vs. spoliation of the dead.  Hospitality to ambassadors.

An introduction to the background of Absalom and Achitophel; its preface and the uses of antithetical style in Dryden's prose and his poetry compared.

Discussion of Book 6 of the Iliad: the difference between the existential threats faced by the Trojans, who nevertheless have the comforts of home, vs. the troubles faced by the Achaian expeditionary force; Achilles's killing of Andromache's family; the cowardice of the archers; Hektor and Aias as mothers.

Some more restrictions imposed by the heroic couplet, and the possibilities they engender.  Dryden on Oldham; the subtlety of his versification and the reality of his praise; Oldham's obscene poem against the author of Sodom (who may have been Rochester, whom Oldham had once admired).

A lecture focused on Homeric simile in the Iliad, but with excursuses to Paradise Lost, and to a consideration of how different traditions meld in Homer, in Roman mythology, and in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles.

The first class in the Introduction to Restoration and Eighteenth Century Poetry.  Considerations of poetic form: the intense restriction of poetic form demands a matching resourcefulness among its poets.  The wit, poetry, obscenity, thoughtfulness of Restoration; it descends to things as they are.  Rochester and Walpole.  The beginning of Denham's "Cooper's Hill."  Note: Apologies for lowish fi: will try to improve next time.

The Introductory class, Fall, 2010, of the course on Homer to Milton.  Readings will include the Iliad, the Odyssey, some Plato, Aristophanes's Clouds, some Ovid, the Aeneid, the Divine Comedy, and Paradise Lost.  The first class is about the attitude of Homer, Dante, and Milton to the visionary company of poet-prophets they seek to join.