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Classics  

[UNDER CONSTRUCTION] This guide provides a basic introduction to research in Classics, the field of study concerned with the languages, literatures, and artifacts of ancient Greece and Rome.
Last Updated: May 14, 2012 URL: http://udallas.libguides.com/classics Print Guide RSS UpdatesEmail AlertsShareThis

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New Additions in Classics for Spring 2012

Cover Art
The Classical Tradition - Ed. by Anthony Grafton et. al.
Call Number: Reference DE 60 .C55
ISBN: 0674035720

How do we get from the polis to the police? Or from Odysseus’ sirens to an ambulance’s? The legacy of ancient Greece and Rome has been imitated, resisted, misunderstood, and reworked by every culture that followed. In this volume, some five hundred articles by a wide range of scholars investigate the afterlife of this rich heritage in the fields of literature, philosophy, art, architecture, history, politics, religion, and science.

Arranged alphabetically from Academy to Zoology, the essays-designed and written to serve scholars, students, and the general reader alike-show how the Classical tradition has shaped human endeavors from art to government, mathematics to medicine, drama to urban planning, legal theory to popular culture.

At once authoritative and accessible, learned and entertaining, comprehensive and surprising, and accompanied by an extensive selection of illustrations, this guide illuminates the vitality of the Classical tradition that still surrounds us today.


 
 

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Classics: An Introduction to Research

"It is not that I consider the literary productions of the ancients irreproachable.  I think only that they have special qualities that can serve marvelously to counterbalance our particular defects.  They prop us up on the side where we lean."  --Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America 

"Classics" refers to several things at once.  The classics are the surviving literary works produced by the educated men of ancient Greece and Rome.  This literature set the forms, themes, and concerns of thought for all subsequent generations in the West.  Following the fall of the Roman empire, however, virtually all of this writing had to be recovered by the excavation or location of copies and fragments.  Reconciling this evidence was very problematic.  Thus the establishment of what the classical authors actually wrote or taught became the concern of the field of classics, which was inaugurated in the Renaissance and continues to the present day. 
The study of classical literature remains the core of the discipline, though primarily for its use as documentary evidence in the analysis of ancient Mediterranean societies rather than its own sake.  Content from approximately ten to twelve thousand works written in a variant of ancient Greek or Latin is currently extant, ranging from fragments to, more rarely, whole texts.  Secondary sources in classics tend to focus on a particular author or set of authors; alternately, a genre, theme, or general subject may be explored.  Most of these are written in English, German, French, or Italian. 
Supporting disciplines deal with the forensic recovery and examination of artifactual or other physical evidence from the Greco-Roman world.  Additionally, virtually all of the modern arts and sciences locate their philosophical and historical roots in the writings of the ancient Greeks and Romans.  A classicist can expect to deal with, if not master, the scholarship and the techniques of some or all of these disciplines.  
 
      
     

    How This Guide Is Organized

    The "Introduction" contains a primer on reading and bibliographic research strategies in classical literatures, the mastery of which facilitates the best use of energy and time in the library.  Most of these principles can be extended to any area of the humanities.  The page "Research and Learning Aids" lists educational and reference sources for linguistic mastery of the classical languages, as well as standard journals and databases in the field.  "Subfields and Genres" addresses certain subject fields and sciences whose focus is applied, but not limited to, the chronological or cultural boundaries of the classical world.  Examples include ancient drama, rhetoric, and the history of science.  "Related and Supporting Disciplines" refers to methods requiring special expertise in the treatment of physical artifacts and how to make reliable inferences from such evidence.  "Greek Authors" and "Latin Authors" provide or refer to textual and reference resources specific to an individual author such as Homer or Cicero; these can include editions, bibliographies, concordances, and commentaries. 

    Generally the user of this guide should click on the main tabs before consulting any of the pages listed on the drop list.  Each main tab will illustrate the general format of the pages listed below and will contain more general resources not listed on pages for specific authors or sub-topics.  The nearest locations of physical resources will shown, with a special emphasis on those available at the Blakley Library; click on the links to Worldcat to check for availability.  Access through checkout, online log-in, interlibrary loan, or the TexShare card program is possible.  See the circulation or reference desks for details. 

     

    Forthcoming Books of Interest

    Cover Art
    Archaeology of the Soul - Seth Benardete
    ISBN: 1587310333
    Publication Date: Summer 2012
    A collection of hard-to-find and unpublished essays by the late Seth Benardete, an obscure but brilliant classicist whose location of dialogic structural patterns in pre-Platonic authors such as Homer and Herodotus is considered by many to be groundbreaking.

     
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