Unit details

CLAN4107 The Written Word

Credit

6 points

Offering
(see Timetable)

Availability	Location	Mode
Semester 2	UWA (Perth)	Face to face

Details for undergraduate courses

• Honours option in Classics and Ancient History [Bachelor of Arts (Honours)]

Content

The adoption of writing by the Greeks and Romans was transformative of their own cultures and came to dominate them in fundamental ways. Our understanding of their civilisations and histories is overwhelmingly reliant on their written records, and on the processes of survival of these records—from inscriptions and speeches, to poems, narrative histories and philosophical investigations—up to the age of printing and beyond. This unit focuses on the technology of writing from its earliest beginnings in Mycenaean Linear B, through to the development of Greek and Roman alphabets, and the different materials used to preserve writing, such as stone, animal skin, metal and papyrus. The physical nature of books and libraries in the classical world is studied, with particular attention to the transition from roll to codex, the book format which remains the standard today. Finally, some attention is paid to the different forms of writing from antiquity to the beginning of printing, especially the emergence of minuscule in the eighth and ninth centuries.

Outcomes

Students are able to (1) demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of the emergence of the Greek and Roman alphabets; (2) to describe, and synthesise the scholarship on, the physical nature of ancient writing materials, especially books, and the commercial and scholarly networks which distributed and preserved them in the ancient world; and (3) evaluate the scholarship on the changes of book forms and writing from late antiquity through to the early modern period.

Assessment

Indicative assessments in this unit are as follows: (1) tutorial participation; (2) essay; and (3) exam. Further information is available in the unit outline.

For units commencing in May 2022 or later the availability of the supplementary assessment is subject to confirmation.

Student may be offered supplementary assessment in this unit if they meet the eligibility criteria.

Except where supplementary assessment is not available in a unit, it will be offered to students in all units who:

• Are in good academic standing overall;
• Have passed over half the units taken in the teaching period concerned, except where they are only enrolled in two or less units in the period;
• Have submitted all assessment items in the unit;
• Have achieved a mark between 45 and 49 for the unit overall, or the same mark in any failed component item in the unit; and
• No finding of academic misconduct has been made against them in the unit concerned.

Additionally student may apply for supplementary assessment in any unit which is the final unit required for graduation in there course and where they have achieved a mark between 45 and 49 for the unit overall, or the same mark in any failed component item in the unit.

Unit Coordinator(s)

Dr Neil O'Sullivan

Unit rules

Prerequisites:

Enroled in the Classics and Ancient History honours programme.

Co-requisites:

Nil.

Incompatibility:

Nil.

Contact hours

2 hour per week for 12 weeks