106-211/311 Classical and Christian Backgrounds To English Literature

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Subject Description:

This subject examines a range of Classical and Christian works to establish how and why they have been influential in Western literature and thought. Students who complete this subject successfully will have read a representative range of Classical literature (representing epic, mythology, elegy, pastoral, satire, theology, literary theory); will have studied several books of the Bible and been introduced to various schools of interpretation (from Patristic to modern times); and will have investigated the many ways in which Classical and Biblical writings have influenced Western thought and literature over the past two millennia.

Assessment:

Prescribed Texts:

• Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, Confessions, Penguin.
• , The Bible, (with Apocrypha) OUP/CUP.
• Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, Bobbs-Merrill or Penguin.
• , The Epic of Gilgamesh, Penguin.
• Homer, Odyssey, Oxford.
• S E Hooke ed, Middle Eastern Mythology, Pelican.
• Horace and Persius, Satires, Penguin.
• Juvenal, Satires, Penguin.
• Ovid, Metamorphoses, Penguin.
• Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus, Norton.
• Virgil, Eclogues and Georgics, Oxford.
• Virgil, Aeneid, Oxford.
• Aristotle, Horace
• Longinus, Classical Literary Criticism, Penguin.