CLU44558 Hellenistic Poetry

This module explores the Greek poetry of the third century BCE, notably that of the Ptolemaic court at Alexandria, Egypt, in its literary, intellectual, and social contexts. Key concepts are poetics and aesthetics, intertextuality and genre, tradition and innovation, continuity and change, politics and ideology, philosophy, and history of thought. In translation, you will study select poems by Callimachus, Theocritus, and Aratus, and all of Apollonius’ epic Argonautica, whose novel hero and heroine, ‘Hellenistic’ world view, bold narrative experiments, and pervasive intertextuality and aetiology inspired Virgil’s Aeneid.