Browsing by Author "Whitaker, Richard"

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    Homer's Epic, 'The Iliad': a world classic in a South African context
    (2013-02) Whitaker, Richard
    For anyone interested in learning more about the interpretation and translation of Homer's epic in a South African context. A lecture series by Emeritus Professor Richard Whitaker, translator, writer, freelance travel writer. Homer’s epic poem, the Iliad, which tells the tale of Troy, has been continuously loved, read and translated for two and a half thousand years. This course will explain why the poem has achieved classic status, and then will explore the poem in a South African context. After an introduction to the archaic Greek world of Homer and the epic, it will look at the plot and major themes of the Iliad, analysing aspects such as the nature of the hero, heroic values and the representation of women. Translation is a vital part of the Iliad’s history, as most readers have always read the epic in translation. The course will compare selected passages in English translations by Alexander Pope (1720), Christopher Logue (War Music, 1959–2005) and the lecturer’s recent southern African version (2012) to show that every translation is an interpretation. Using the lecturer’s own translation, the course will demonstrate how the Iliad can be understood in the light of South Africa’s present and past. Similarities will be drawn between the world of the epic and aspects of South African society, such as the assessment of bride-price in cattle and poetic praise singing as a central way in which a person’s identity survives into the future in an oral culture. LECTURE TITLES: 1. Homer and the Iliad: Where? When? How?; 2. ‘Muse sing the anger of Achilles’: the plot of the Iliad; 3. Major themes of the epic: gods and heroes, life and death; 4. The Iliad in English: translation as interpretation; 5. Understanding the Iliad in a southern African context. Recommended reading: * Griffin, J. 1980. Homer on Life and Death. Oxford: Clarendon Press. * Steiner, G. 1996. Homer in English. London: Penguin. * Whitaker, R. 2012. The Iliad of Homer: a Southern African Translation. Cape Town: New Voices.
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    Horace in dialogue : a Bakhtinian study of speakers, interlocutors, addressees and audiences in the moralising satires of horace sermones books one and two
    (2000) Sharland, Suzanne Jane; Whitaker, Richard
    This thesis examines a selection of poems from both books of Horace's Satires against a backdrop of the dialogic theoretical system conceptualised by the Russian thinker Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin (1895-1975). The thesis proposes examining Horatian satire or sermo, as Horace himself termed his genre, as the 'conversation' that this name implies it is. Bakhtin himself observed that Horace's Satires were one of the works that could be considered ancient forebears of modern novelistic dialogic discourse, although he failed to elaborate on this. The thesis takes its cue from here, and seeks to explore the ways in which Bakhtinian theory can elucidate the many dialogic facets of the Satires of Horace.
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    Narrative strategies in the gospel according to Luke : a Bakhtinian exploration
    (2004) Fischer, Bettina Irene; Whitaker, Richard; Wanamaker, CA
    Using the theory of the twentieth century Russian literary scholar and linguist, Mikhail Bakhtin, this thesis has set out to explore narrative strategy in the Gospel of Luke, the aim being to consider how this would affect a generic reading, and what implications this would have in assessing the discourse of this text. Bakhtin classifies early Christian writings as part of the Menippea, a collective name for a body of parodying-travestying literature ofthe Graeco-Roman period. In contrast to the classical genres of the mainstream, epic, love-poetry and tragedy, Bakhtin rates Menippean texts as being essentially dialogic, engaged in exploring ideas of life and death from the perspective of a carnivalistic view ofthe world. He uses the genre of the Greek Romance, seen by him as a forerunner of the European novel, to demonstrate some of his theory. Having selected the Romance, Chaereas and Callirhoe, by Chariton, as a comparative text to the Gospel of Luke, both texts are explored in terms of the Bakhtinian concepts of chronotope, carnival, and intertextuality.
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    Philodemus on Rhetoric books 1 and 2 : translation and exegetical essays
    (2000) Chandler, Clive; Whitaker, Richard
    This thesis attempts to elucidate Philodemus' approach to one aspect of paideia, that of rhetoric as treated in the first two books of his On Rhetoric, and to account for this approach within the broader tradition of Epicurean thiking on this discipline. As a preliminary to the investigation of this topic a complete English translation is provided of the most recent edition of the text (Longo Auricchio [1977]). The subsequent study takes the form of series of three essays which seek to clarify Philodemus' conception of the problem and through a close reading, to provide an exegetical commentary on the most important features of Philodemus' approach, especially the way he manages citations from the works of the Founders of Epicureanism in support of his own views.