Fall 2005 Courses with Prof. John Van Sickle

Tuesday, Friday: 9:25-10:40 CS 1 [BAMD]; 12:15-1:30: Classics 0.11, Vocabulary Building

BUT ABOVE ALL: Tuesday, Friday: 10:50-12:05 -- Making Pastoral Myth

English 50.91, Comparative Literature 18.5 , Classics 44
Reserve place now: E-mail jvsickle@brooklyn.cuny.edu

Imagine yourself alone up in "them thar hills" taking care of goats & sheep: what lonely herders do up there by themselves has long made city folk suppose the best & worst.

Moses reported that while up there alone with sheep he heard the Lord's voice from a burning bush declare his life's mission.

Hesiod likewise reported that up there the Muses met him herding sheep & ordered a poem about the Greek gods' origin.

King David was a herder & singer: Psalm 23 opens with a pastoral metaphor: "The Lord is my shepherd."

Imagination has often linked country & city by metaphor:
     herdsmen rule their flocks;
     rulers herd their subjects.
Homer calls King Agamemnon 'shepherd of the people': because the king fleeced Achilles & the other Greeks at Troy?

Lovers & Poets, too, have often been portrayed as herdsmen.

      The course will look at pastoral modes from ancient Sumerian, Greek, Roman through English Spenser, Wordsworth, Dickens, Frost, Auden, Walcott.
       We will pick out viewpoints, plots, & themes as field marks that we can recognize in later cultural products: projects will include internet searches on such keywords as "pastoral and/or bucolic" to find traces of old pastoral in new masks.

Course requirements, in addition to assignments to read & discuss, will include two essays on topics arising from reading, discussion, & internet search.
Prerequisite: Core Studies 1 or permission from the instructor.

Back to main page http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/classics/jvsickle
E-mail jvsickle@brooklyn.cuny.edu
pastoral scene
Moses shepherding hears the Lord
in the burning bush
pastoral scene
Scene with musicians, lovers, goats
[Greco-Roman] Justine Kurland Puppy Love
"Puppy Love" 
[Justine Kurland: American: found by internet search on keywords of "painting"+"pastoral"+"bucolic"]