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| Overview. |
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Plutarch
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The
story of biography is a short one — or so it seems.
Most
retrospectives on the genre single out Suetonius and
Plutarch, the two core authors for this course, as the
genre's originators. Yet the origins of biography
and autobiography are more complicated than mainstream
scholarship allows.
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Our purpose in this course is
to trace out those origins and their continuation in later
literature. Along the way we shall consider how each
work asks to be seen, whether as history, propaganda, moral
exemplar, philosophy, or fantasy.
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| Objectives. |
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The
specific goals for this course are as follows:
- to
understand the content, form, scope and structure of ancient
biography;
- to
approach biography as a vehicle for narrative, social commentary,
historiography, and other concerns; and
- to
explore the conceptual foundations of Western biographical
writing.
Furthermore,
students will draw upon universal skills of critical reading
and thinking, and will communicate these skills in class and
in written exercises.
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