Dear Cinemythologists,
A gentle reminder that Quiz 2, on our Heracles/Hercules unit, is due via email on Sunday, October 11, at noon (EST).
Please visit our Quizzes page for complete guidelines, and remember to follow the formatting requirements.
DC
Assignment for Thursday, 10.01.20
Dear Cinemythologists,
On Thursday, October 1, our unit on Heracles/Hercules continues. In the second half of the class, we’ll take a close look at another tragic text about the hero. In the first half, we’ll consider the meaning of muscle in visual media writ large.
READING
- Euripides, Heracles.
Of the major Athenian playwrights, Euripides was the least popular in his own lifetime. But after his death his reputation grew, to the point where the number of his surviving works exceeds that of Sophocles and Aeschylus combined.
That said, the Heracles is among his lesser known plays. But it is well worth considering as a literary text that takes great liberties with the hero’s legend. What those liberties are and how they resonate in modern screen texts will be our focus.
VIEWING
Last spring, Gregory Spinner (Religious Studies) and I curated a Tang Museum exhibiton called FLEX, which took a hard look at muscled bodies from antiquity to modernity.
Of the videos linked above, the first introduces some of the aims and goals of the exhibition, even as it kicks off the exhibition’s permanent residency in cyberspace. The second video was part of the exhibition itself, a 20-minute montage covering 100+ years of muscle in screen media.
Watch both and take notes on anything that interests you. In the first hour of our class we’ll be joined by Professor Spinner on a virtual tour of some of the objects from the exhibition, especially those that intersect with the notions of heroism and legend in our current unit.
DC
Assignment for Tuesday, 09.22.20
Dear Cinemythologists,
On Tuesday, September 22, our second unit, on Heracles/Hercules, officially begins. As is customary, we’ll begin with some primary sources: all reading, no viewing (apart from some optional videos in our Classical World series).
READING
- “Apollodorus” on Heracles.
This is an excerpt from the Bibliotheca or Library of Greek myth, an ancient encyclopedia dedicated to cataloguing and sorting out the vast body of legends and lore associated with the Greco-Roman world. The author was thought to have been the famous scholar, Apollodorus of Athens (2nd century BCE), but the work is now thought to date to the 2nd century CE — hence “Apollodorus” in scare quotes.
Although you won’t need to know every last detail about Heracles’ life and career, you should try to appreciate the sheer quantity of his exploits, and what that quantity might mean. In class we’ll use “Apollodorus” as the basis for generating a rough outline of the hero’s legend, as we did for Perseus.
Sophocles, the premier playwright of Athens in the 5th-century BCE, presents a tragic episode from late in Heracles’ life. If you’ve never read a Greek play before, the dynamic between the speeches of the actors and the songs of the Chorus (which you should not ignore) will likely seem odd and artificial.
Nevertheless, this tragedy affords us an excellent point of comparison with the all-inclusive, encyclopedic approach of “Apollodorus.” In particular, consider the genre itself. What should a tragedy about Heracles focus on? Also pay attention to how Sophocles navigates the vast trajectory of Heracles’ career. What does he place in the past? In the future?
NOTE: You can read the translation in your browser, or download a PDF.
- (OPTIONAL) “What Is Tragedy?” / “Theaters & Theatrical Space” / “The City Dionysia“
If you are new to Athenian tragedy, these videos (part of our flipped classroom in CC 200: The Classical World) will provide some orientation into the performative and civic context of the genre. Of course, entries in the the Oxford Reference database would do just as well.
In class we’ll discuss these versions of the Heracles legend, and then take a tour of how the hero appears on screen.
DC
