GK4201 The Age of Experiment: The World of Hellenistic Prose

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Module description

In the Hellenistic period Greek literature and culture become truly global. Never before has Greek engaged with so many influences, literary, political, cultural and social. Boundaries between different genres, and different levels of language, become permeable in a way unthinkable in the ‘classical’ period. Polybius’ Greek engages with civic inscriptions; the Greek of the Hebrew Bible integrates Hebrew and Greek as well as elements of everyday speech. Inscriptions, previously ‘functional’ texts, become prose masterpieces; papyrus letters enable us for the first time to observe everyday Greek in action, and how it interacted with literary texts. In this module you will gain first-hand experience with these texts, what they tell us about the Greek language and the world in which they were written. You will witness the transformation of Greek, gain unique insight into the interplay between texts and their contexts, and recover previously suppressed voices.

Intended learning outcomes

• identify characteristics of Hellenistic Greek language and literature
• analyse Hellenistic Greek language and literature in their social, cultural and political context
• discuss, to a high academic standard, known and unknown examples of a wide variety of Hellenistic Greek texts
• discuss the relationship between Hellenistic Greek language and literature and the literature of the Classical period