Greek Epigram

3 units

Personal, witty, poignant, raunchy: epigrams show us the whole spectrum of human emotions and offer us glimpses at the strata of society rarely preserved in the literary record. This course will offer a comprehensive study of the development of the genre of Greek epigram, from its beginnings through the Imperial Period, with a particular focus on the Hellenistic Period, when it rose in popularity and its literary conventions were shaped. Students will read a wide selection of poems in the main types of epigram: funerary, dedicatory, erotic, and epideictic, and consider questions of authorship attribution. In particular, we will study the organization of collections, both using papyrological evidence (i.e. the new Posidippus discovery) to think about the artistic decisions behind ancient collections and also using the textual tradition to investigate how late antique and Byzantine collections have shaped our knowledge of the genre. Topics of study will also include epigraphic use of the poems, the role of objects and deicticism, the depiction of women, and connections in the aesthetics of epigram with contemporary art history.