History of Greek literature (grad.)

Pre-requisites: Passed colloquies and seminary paper. Colloquies, which content is being dealt with on classes, is passed during semester.

Course objectives: Lectures in History of Greek literature should present students with basic societal and historical surroundings in which the literature appeared and to fulfill their knowledge on literary theoretical notions of Ancient poetry and rhetoric. Greek literature was growing in a long period but still haven't got its final form. Overview and history of literary types show that Greek literature should be dealt with along diachronic and synchronic line.

Course description: The notion of Greek literature and basic assumptions: Epic poetry, Hellenistic epic, Hellenistic lyric, definition of elegy and its major representatives, iambography; tragedy - its origins, composition and performance; comedy - origins and division; Comedy of Aristophanes as an example and model for Roman satyre; fable; logography - its definition and representatives;Herodotus - genre and style features of his "History"; Thucydides - elements of rhetoric and composition in his works; Xenophon, Polybius, Arrian, and historians around Alexander the Great; philosophical literature - Ionians and prose, philosophy in verse, the first sophistic and its representatives, second sophistic, Socrates, Plato and dialogue, philosophical schools after Aristotle, Theophrastus Characters, neoplatonism; Rhetoric - notion and place in the system, 7 free arts, (Septem artes liberales) basic fields of oration, composition of oration, practice for orators and theory of genres; The development of epistolography and the appearance of novel; Students read texts from the work presented on lectures (20 pp. in total). During the both semesters students translate and make analysis on class.

Learning Outcomes: Students are capable to deal with texts of Ancient authors independently from the point of stylistics, literary theory and critics, and also to compare them with literary texts of contemporary authors.

Literature/Reading:

• Miloš N. Đurić, Istorija helenske književnosti, Beograd, 1996.
• The Cambridge History of classical Literature, Greek Literature, ed. By P.E. Easterling and B.M.W. Knox, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, London, New York, New Rochelle, Melbourne, Sydney, 1985.
• - A. Lesky, Povijest grčke književnosti (prev. Z. Dukat), Zagreb 2001.