GUIDING LIGHTS: GREAT WRITERS FROM ANCIENT GREECE TO SEVENTEENTH CENTURY JAPAN

Karen Jennings, author, postdoctoral fellow at the Laboratory for the Economics of Africa’s Past, Stellenbosch University

Monday 9–Friday 13 January

1.00 pm

COURSE FEES R550

This series of lectures will look at several influential authors from the past, starting with Homer in the distant days of ancient Greece, right up to the seventeenth century Japanese poet Matsuo Basho. We will explore the ways in which these authors used different writing forms, traditions and techniques to do new and exciting things that have had a lasting impact on the way we think, such as understanding complex emotions, grappling with an expanding world, and learning to focus on the finer details of ordinary things. We will learn about what it is to be human in the world, and how to live, engage and adapt. The last few moments of each lecture will also look at practical lessons to be learnt from these authors in terms of inspiration (or dealing with writer’s block) for the scribblers, thinkers and writers amongst you.

Lecture titles

1. Ancient Greece and emotion: ‘The Rage of Achilles’ in Homer’s Iliad and Euripides’ Medea

2. Ancient Rome and translation/transformation: the poetry of Catullus and Ovid

3. Camões and place: Book V of Os Lusiadas (The Lusiad)

4. Shakespeare and making it new: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

5. Matsuo Basho and Japanese poetic traditions: renga, haiku and haibun

Recommended reading

There is no recommended reading list, but if participants want to familiarise themselves with some of the authors or texts mentioned in the lecture outline, they are welcome to.

BOOK HERE