Paper V Option (b): Classical Literature

This paper is situated as both a preliminary and as a referent in the field of literary studies; that is, its aim is both to familiarize students with the classical foundation of subsequent European and English literature, and to acquaint them with the “origins” of different forms of writing--the epic, drama, dialectical and narrative modes, for instance--that later flourished across Europe and America as both inspiration and model.

The paper is comparative and divided into two sections: classical Greek and classical Indic texts. Although the term classical in both cases refers to texts generated before 400 A.D. or so, these two sections are intended not only as an introduction in the foundational texts of two separate cultures--the Northern Mediterranean and the Southern Asian--they are also intended as an introduction in comparative analysis: to evaluate (for example) whether texts called Epics in the two cultures are foundationally similar or not, whether they explore the same issues or not, use the same literary devices or not, overlap substantially, or partially, or not all; and so on.

There has been an attempt to ascertain the inclusion of broadly "similiar" texts in the Indic and Grecian sections of the paper (Drama, Theory, Epic, for example) but of course these similarities are themselves issues to be discussed and examined over the course of the academic year.

Apart from the core texts (three from the Sanskrit and three from the Greek), the course also familiarizes students with a number of prescribed subsidiary texts: essays, theories, and studies culled from centuries of observations by intellectuals and commentators on the main texts themselves.