CLST 205/3.0: Ancient Humour

This course is available to both Queen’s and non-Queen’s students. Non-Queen’s students (including interest students, visiting students, and new online degree students) must first apply for admission. The following is presented for informational purposes only and is subject to change.

Instructor

E-mail:  griffitd@queensu.ca
Phone:  (613) 533-6000 x 74823

Office:  Watson Hall 513

Course Description

The techniques by which humour was created in literature and the visual arts in antiquity; social and psychological aspects of humour.

Course Overview

To the best of my knowledge, this is the only course of its kind taught anywhere in the world (though you will find many courses on “ancient comedy”, which is a subset of drama). The course was put on the books in 1971 and actually taught for the first time in 1973-74. The original calendar entry for the course reads, “The Greeks and Romans were no less conscious than ourselves of the need to laugh at a world that offered all too much misery. This course will combine a series of readings (in translation) from ancient comedy, satire, romance, and literary parody, with discussions of the use of humour as relief in more serious genres such as epic, tragedy, and courtroom speeches.”

The objective of the course remains much as it was forty years ago, though perhaps with less emphasis on misery. I myself first taught this course to thirty-nine students in the fall of 1991. Eventually my students clamored for “web-notes” for the course, and these notes morphed in 2007 into the textbook I coauthored with Robert B. Marks (2nd revised edition, 2011), with illustrations by Laura E. Ludtke. In 2012 this became the first Humanities course at Queen’s to be reconfigured as a “blended-learning” course.

Course Topics

What is Humour?
Why is it Funny?
A Funny World
The Earliest Humour
Eccentrics Looking for a Story
A Farmyard of Quacks
A Sucker for Every Occasion
Bursting the Bubble and Other Oddities
The Sexual Dimension
Epic Proportions
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Agora
The Roman Wit

More information:

• Computer Requirements and Internet Access
• Moodle, Our Online Learning Environment 
• Academic Integrity
• Evaluation
• Suggested Time Commitment
• Required Material