Week 9
Preparation for Mon.
Apr. 10
Read Menander’s The Girl From
Be sure to read the italicized sections that
explain what is missing from the surviving text (sections that are lost in the
surviving manuscripts).
As you read the play, ask yourself what the
plays tells us about contemporary Athenian attitudes to fathers, sons, wives,
mistresses, slaves. Based on the
evidence of the play, what are the dynamics of the sexual politics?
*Diotima is an outstanding collection
of web-based materials on women in the ancient world. Visit the website (http://www.stoa.org/diotima/)
and do half an hour of browsing. I
assure you that you will find interesting material. Come to class with one interesting discovery that you have
made that somehow relates to Menander’s The Girl From Samos (it
doesn’t have to be a very close connection). I recommend that you click on “What’s New” – alternatively, you
could click on “Search” and try some search strings. You won’t get too much with the keyword Menander.
One interesting resource on Diotima is
a translation of a collection of Hellenistic epigrams that has only just been
unearthed (as yet unpublished in print form).
They are from the time in which Menander was writing, and have just been
rediscovered, more than 2,000 years after being written! Read at http://www.stoa.org/diotima/anthology/epigrams.shtml
For pudding, read some of Philogelos’ jokes (his name means “Laughter-lover) at
http://www.stoa.org/diotima/anthology/quinn_jokes.shtml.
Some of them are relevant to the topic of
sexual politics, but all of them give a sense of what the ancients thought
funny (though they were compiled in the 4th/5th century
A.D., many of them go back much earlier.
Preparation for Wed.
Apr. 12
Prepare for Test 2.
Preparation for Fri.
Apr. 14
EASTER BREAK - learn your lines!