General information

Course type AMUPIE
Module title Ancient Popular Topoi and Motifs in Culture and Literature
Language English
Module lecturer Prof. UAM dr hab. Radosław Piętka
Lecturer's email platon@amu.edu.pl
Lecturer position profesor uczelni
Faculty Faculty of Polish and Classical Philology
Semester 2023/2024 (summer)
Duration 30
ECTS 4
USOS code 03-AP-APT

Timetable

Module aim (aims)

Pre-requisites in terms of knowledge, skills and social competences (where relevant)

General familiarity with classics; basic familiarity with the terminology of history of arts and theory of literature; having read a number of classical texts, original or translated; attending other lectures on classical culture.

Syllabus

Course learning content:

  1. Concepts and ideas: motif, commonplace, theme, symbol, archetype, myth;
  2. Classical motifs reworked in modern culture;
  3. Homeric epic about war and travelling: short history of the universal metaphors of human life;
  4. Ancient bestiary and modern posthuman reflections;
  5. Astral imagination, ancient and modern;
  6. Ancient poleology in modern guise: motif of the city (and its ruins) in contemporary art and literature;
    Ancient motifs in contemporary cinema.

Reading list

to be announced in class (e.g. E. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages. Oxford 2013 [1953]; M. Beard, J. Henderson, Classics. A Very Short Introduction. Oxford 1997; Classical Myth and Culture in the Cinema. Ed. M.M. Winkler. Oxford 2001; Living Classics: Greece and Rome in Contemporary Poetry in English. Ed. S.J. Harrison. Oxford 2009; Classics for All: Reworking Antiquity in Mass Culture. Ed. D. Lowe, K. Shahabudin. Newcastle 2009).