CLAS3891: Literary Culture from Nero to Trajan

• CLAS1601 or CLAS1301

• None

• None

• To introduce students to a variety of post-Augustan authors, with a special focus on Neronian, Flavian, and Trajanic eras.
• To situate these texts in the broader context of Roman literary history addressing e.g. development of genres; changing literary tastes; evolution of literary conventions
• To explore the political and social dimensions of Neronian, Flavian, and Trajanic literature.

• This module involves critical and synoptic study of Latin literature and Roman literary culture c. 55 130 C.E. It focuses on Neronian, Flavian, and Trajanic Rome as periods of particularly vibrant literary development that experimented with new forms and redefined established Augustan aesthetics. Texts will be approached from the broad view of literary history, with an eye to evaluating their interconnections, their membership of specific genres, and their place within Romes literary landscape. Throughout, the module also maintains focus on how individual political climates affected literary production, e.g. Neros philhellenism and cultural experimentation, or state sponsorship of literature under Vespasian. Genres may include: satire (Seneca, Persius, Juvenal); bucolic (Calpurnius Siculus); the novel (Petronius); epigram (Loukillios, Martial); epic (Lucan, Statius, Valerius Flaccus); epistolography (Seneca, Pliny); rhetoric (Tacitus, Quintilian).

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• Knowledge of the major examples, authors, and styles of Latin literature of the early Empire
• Familiarity with the literary genres of this period
• Familiarity with the aims and methods of literary history
• Knowledge of the political and social dimensions of Neronian, Flavian, and Trajanic literature.

Subject-specific Skills:

• Ability to understand and interpret a wide range of complex literary genres;
• to place them in their socio-cultural and historical context;
• to discuss in an informed and sophisticated way the modern scholarly approaches to this literature

Key Skills:

• Ability to use both primary and secondary sources to interpret texts;
• Ability to use texts as a means of understanding their broader cultural background;
• Ability to evaluate the arguments of others and to produce arguments of one's own in support of a given case.
• Ability to sustain a clear, well-structured, and well-defended argument in written form.

• Lectures will provide detailed analysis of the material while also enabling students to discuss and develop their ideas in an interactive environment.
• Seminars and tutorials will provide impulse for further discussion, guided by set reading.
• One item of formative assessment will enable students to develop their skills in critical analysis and comprehension of material prior to the summatives.
• Two items of summative assessment, an essay and exam, will assess the students' familiarity with the evidence and the sophistication of their analyses. They will test students' ability to focus on relevant issues, synthesise their knowledge and produce an argument appropriate to questions raised.

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