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This module begins with the wisdom literature of ancient Babylon, and traces its influence on the didactic poetry of archaic Greece in Hesiod’s Works and Days. Thereafter it proceeds to examine the continuation of the didactic tradition in the Physics of the Presocratic philosopher-poet Empedocles, before turning to the Roman world and Lucretius’ On the Nature of the Universe. Attention is paid throughout to the literary conventions of the genre, intertextuality between poems, the message the poets are attempting to convey, and the techniques they employ in their instruction.
On successful completion of this module, students will have a good understanding of the main themes of the wisdom literature of the ancient Near East and the didactic poetry of ancient Greece and Rome, and of the principal scholarly approaches employed in its interpretation.
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