Myth and Religion in the Ancient City

This module provides an introduction to the study of Antiquity by focusing on myth and art from early Greece and beyond.

Art and Society in the Ancient City

In these lectures we will explore society in the ancient Greek world in terms of civic architecture, artistic development and social constructs. We will assess artworks in terms of pictorial expression, social meaning, and archaeological context. Avenues for investigation will include myth, gender, religion, social development, status and rites of passage in the Greek world.

Myth and the Fighting Male

This strand of the module is focused on early Greek myth, especially the concept of the hero as a figure poised between men and gods, concentrating on artistic evidence from vase-painting and narrative evidence from early epic poetry. The principal sources studied are the Odyssey of Homer, and the mythological corpus as transmitted in ancient compilations like the Library of Apollodorus. We will also look at the renewal of Greek myth in later ages, including its recreation in Irish literature.

Required texts

Homer, Odyssey translated by R. Fagles (Penguin Classics) or M. Hammond (Duckworth)

Apollodorus, The Library of Greek Mythology (Oxford World?s Classics)

T. Carpenter, Art and Myth in Ancient Greece (London: Thames & Hudson, 1991)

A. Stewart, Classical Greece and the Birth of Western Art (Cambridge University Press, 2008)

Merugud Uilix: a Medieval Irish Version of the Odyssey Myth (text will be supplied)