Unit details

CLAN4107 The Written Word

Credit

6 points

Offering
(see Timetable)

If this unit does not have an online alternative, then students who are presently unable to enter Western Australia and whose studies would be delayed by an inability to complete this unit, should contact the unit coordinator (details given on this page) to ascertain, on an individual case-by-case basis, if alternate arrangements can be made to support their study in this unit.

Availability	Location	Mode
Semester 2	UWA (Perth)	Face to face Predominantly face-to-face. On campus attendance required to complete this unit. May have accompanying resources online.

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.

Supplementary assessment is not available in this unit.

Unit Coordinator(s)

Dr Neil O'Sullivan

Unit rules

Prerequisites:

Enroled in the Classics and Ancient History honours programme.

Contact hours

2 hour per week for 12 weeks