Proposed Course

Paradoxography:

Ancient Greek and Roman Literature of Wonders and Marvels

Synopsis

Stories of fantastic places, peoples, and objects populated the imagination of the ancients. Besides being entertaining stories of the strange, bizarre, and out-of-this world, such accounts are an excellent (and understudied) way through which to peer into the complexities of ancient cultures. Understanding how people dealt with the abnormal provides a striking picture for us moderns of ancient ideas of "normal"; the monstrous and bizarre transgressions of nature and society highlight some of the limits and the boundaries which distinguished ancient conceptions of basic cultural categories. In this course we will look at bizarre and unusual stories from ancient Greece and Rome in order to ask what such stories might tell us about ancient modes of dealing with distant and unknown peoples, places, creatures, and objects.

We begin the course by looking at the study of wonders both as literature and as folklore, starting outside of the ancient world for orientation in the first week and then looking at the surviving ancient wonder-book by Phlegon of Tralles in the second week. Phlegon's stories offer a cross-section of the type of stories we will study in the following weeks and thus we will return to individual parts of this text in different contexts. After this introduction, we will look at the literary history of wonder-writing, not only in order to know the sources for most ancient wonder-stories but also in order to build a picture of the changes in the practice of writing about wonders and marvels. For example, we will look at the apparent origins of the genre of wonder stories under the combined influence of 1. Aristotelian science and 2. the rise of libraries and centers of learning in the Greek world of the third century B.C. (As one prominent scholar of the early 20th century put it: wonder literature is a parasite on the tree of historical and scientific literature.) In the third section of the course we will look at different types of marvels: monstrous births and hermaphrodism, travel literature and stories about the oddities at the ends of the world, bizarre creatures and animal behavior, and ghost stories. Finally, we will end with a discussion of belief and disbelief and the relationship between wonder literature and knowledge about the world.

In short, this course considers not only wonder tales and possible ways of interpreting them (e.g. as folktales, as an example of "the fantastic" in literature) but also at the role that these stories played in different social and cultural contexts: e.g. in Classical Athens, at the court of the Ptolemies in Egypt, or in the literary culture of Rome.

Requirements:

Class Participation (50%): Although I will from time to time give mini-lectures, the primary mode of this class is seminar discussion. Read and think about the material each week and come prepared to share your insights and comments.

Writing Assignments :

  1. Paper (35%): The sources for ancient wonder-tales make for a patchwork history and while the selections in this class attempt to provide breadth and depth, the complexity of some sources and the vastness of the material treated makes this an impossible task. Therefore, to delve further, your task for the paper is to choose a small number of texts, authors, or tales for further study. Choose at least two texts or tales as your primary body of data. For example, you could look at two authors like Apollonius and Callimachus, or tales of people turning into trees and Aristotle's work on plants, or a modern short story and a series of ancient tales on the same subject. Your texts do not necessarily have to be texts we've read in class. Discuss the role that wonders play in each of these works. You can discuss issues of belief, audience and author interaction, the history of science, literary themes, etc. Papers should be 10-15 pages. You should email or meet with me before the ninth week of the course to discuss your topic. I will read and discuss drafts submitted by the end of week 13.
  2. Web-based discussion (15%): Throughout the course we will be reading speculative fiction (aka science fiction, fantasy, etc.) -- a mix of classics, short stories, and literary criticism. These readings are marked below by the superscript web. Each of these readings is related to the texts for the week. We will discuss the first selection (L. Sprague de Camp's "Little Green Men from Afar") in the first week along with the regular readings. However, for the majority of the course we will discuss this material via a web-based threaded discussion. This less ancient fiction was chosen as a way to confront the topics in the class with particular emphasis on the role which wonder literature plays in the modern world. Each week you are required to post a few comments to the web discussion about the story or essay and how it might relate to the ancient material. Here the focus is on content rather than form. Comments can be informal. Simply think about the material a bit after you have finished a particular selection, transfer your thoughts to written form and post them. Read what others have said and add your comments.

Schedule

Orientation: Monsters and Marvels

Week 1 /
  • Daston and Park "Introduction: At the Limit" = Wonders and the Order of Nature (1998): 13-20.
  • Daston and Park Chapter 5 "Monsters: A Case Study" 173-214
  • L. Sprague de Camp "Little Green Men from Afar" (1976)

Week 2 /
  • Phlegon of Tralles Book of Marvels: 25-49
  • Hansen, W. "Introduction" = Phlegon of Tralles' Book of Marvels (1996).
  • Brunvand, "Legends and Anecdotes" in The Study of American Folklore (1998): 196-222
  • Hansen: "Folklore" in Civilization of the Ancient Mediterranean: Greece and Rome 2 (1988): 1121-30

web Shelley, M. Frankenstein (chapters 1-8)

Literature of Wonders: A Brief History

Week 3 / The Greek Story to the Hellenistic period and the Genre of Paradoxography
  • Aulus Gellius Attic Nights 9.4
  • Romm, J.S. "Wonders of the East" = The Edges of the Earth in Ancient Thought (1992): 82-109
  • Greek marvel-sampler (pre-Hellenistic): Homer, Herodotus, Ktesias, Theopompus, Hecataeus

web Shelley, M. Frankenstein (chapters 9-16)
Week 4 /

Origins of a Genre?

  • Aristotle Historia Animalium Book 9, pseudo-Aristotle On Marvellous Things Heard
  • "Geography" in Greek Science of the Hellenistic Era: A Sourcebook 113-149
  • Greek marvel sampler (Hellenistic and later Greek): brief selections from Callimachus, Posidippus (Milan papyrus), Apollonius, Antigonus, pseudo-Aristotle and anonymous collections (Florentine, Vatican, and Palatine)
  • Robert Barnes: "Cloistered Bookworms in the Chicken-Coop of the Muses: the Ancient Library of Alexandria" in The Library of Alexandria (2000): 61-77

web Shelley, M. Frankenstein (chapters 17-24)
Week 5 /

The Roman Story

  • Pliny Natural History book 7
  • C. Pomponius Mela book 1 (in F.E. Romer 1998 with map)

web Aldiss, B.W. "The Difficulties Involved in Photographing Nex Olympica"

Species of Marvels

Week 6 /

Monstrous Births

  • Monsters (Hesiod: Theogony and selections from Enuma Elish)
  • Hermaphrodites (Ovid: Metamorphoses 4.271-388; Salmacis Inscription)

webCampbell, J. "What do you mean . . . human"
Week 7 /

Fantastic Lands 1

  • Homer Odyssey 9-12
  • Other epic marvels: Kypria (F 19 Davies), Lynkeus (F13), Kyknos (arg. 32.69-70 = 42.54-55)

webH.G. Wells The First Men in the Moon (chapters 1-8)
Week 8 /

Fantastic Lands 2

  • Apollonius Argonautica 1 and 2

web Wells (chapters 9-16)
Week 9 /

Fantastic Lands 3

  • Herodotus Histories book 2
  • Konon 43 [Fires at Aetna]
  • Strabo (selections)

web Wells (chapters 17-26)
Week 10 /

Amazing Creatures

  • Athenaeus beginning of book 13 [on fish]
  • review Phlegon of Tralles 34-35 from week 2
  • bits and pieces: Aelian book 1; Konon 22 with Aelian NA 6.63; Hekataios: Fr 1, F 15 (vine growing dog's blood), F 17 (talking ram)

web Charnas, S. M. "Boobs"
Week 11 /

Ghosts

  • Plautus Mostellaria; Pliny Letter 7.27; Lucian Philopseudes
  • Felton "The Folklore of Ghosts" (1-21) and "The Fate of the Ghost Story" (89-97) from Felton, D. (1999) Haunted Greece and Rome: Ghost Stories from Classical Antiquity

web Simak, C. "Desertion"

Belief and Disbelief

Week 12 /

Prose Fiction 1

  • Apuleius [selection]

  • Todorov The Fantastic chapter 2 (24-40) and chapter 10 (157-175)

Film: Gilliam, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
Week 13 /

Prose Fiction 2

  • Lucian True History

web Munchausen (excerpts); Arthur C. Clarke "The Secret"
Week 14 /

Rationalization

  • Palaephatus On Unbelievable Tales (trans. Stern)
  • Shermer, M. "How Thinking Goes Wrong" = Why People Believe Weird Things (revised edition): 44-62

web Dedman, S. "Tourist Trade" and Ross "Useful Phrases for the Tourist" in Not the Only Planet: Science Fiction Travel Stories, D. Broderick ed.
Week 15 /

Pseudo-science

  • Sloan, B. "Spicing Up the News: The Evolution of Sensationalism" = I Watched a Wild Hog Eat My Baby! (2001): 17-28
  • Bird, "Writers, Text, and Audience. Tabloids as Folklore" = For Enquiring Minds: A Cultural Study of Supermarket Tabloids (1992): 162-200
  • Hartwell, D.G. "The Age of Science Fiction is Twelve" = introduction to Age of Wonders
  • Shermer, M. "The Most Precious Thing We Have: The difference between science and pseudoscience" = Why People Believe Weird Things: 24-43