Description:
What was it like to smell the familiar scents of home, or taste food that was intimately tied with memories of home? How did people’s senses engage with the surroundings during religious celebrations and what was done to alter that experience, either negatively or positively? These are some of the questions that will be investigated in this course. Along the way, students will become more familiar with a variety of sources such as archaeology, epigraphy and literary sources. Within the literary sources, various genres will be studied, such as lyric poetry, epic poetry or comedy, each possessing its own peculiarities for students to work with. The aim of the course is to bring the sensory back into our understanding of ancient culture and (daily) life. It will challenge students to think differently about the past and its sensations, especially the osmic experience of ancient life that is lacking in our modern hyper sanitised world.
A selection of primary sources:
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists
Aristophanes, Birds and Peace
Hesiod, Works and Days
Homer’s, Odyssey
Pausanias
Theophrastus, Causes of Plants
- Lehrende/r: Roy van Wijk