The Poetry and the Poetics of C. P. Cavafy

Course description This course offers students a systematic introduction to Cavafy’s poetry. It gives them the opportunity to acquaint themselves with key aspects of Cavafy’s poetics. Another aim of the course is to equip students with the analytical skills to approach Cavafy’s masterpieces. In addition, the course will explore Cavafy’s beliefs about poetry and life, as they are expressed in his poems and they are formulated in his essays and critical texts. More specifically the course focuses on the ways Cavafy creates his narrative and dramatic personas in his “canon” poems. The way the persona’s identity is constructed is connected with the development of his poetics which, gradually, becomes more complex. In order to be able to follow the course students have to undertake some preparatory reading. A preliminary bibliography relating to identity, persona and irony, will be available on e-class from the beginning of the term.

Objectives

Objectives The course aims to introduce students to Cavafy’s Poetics, exploring, through close reading, the way he constructs his narrative and dramatic personas.

Prerequisites

No prerequisities.

Syllabus

Contents 1. Introduction to Cavafy’s Poetry. 2. Poetry and painting (“Pictured”, On Board Ship”). 3. Poetry and sculpture I (“The Retinue of Dionysus”, “Sculptor of Tyana”). 4. Poetry and sculpture II (“For the Shop”, “Apollonios from Tyana in Rhodes”). 5. Cavafy’s poets (Τhat’s the Man”, «Dareios”, “A noble Man, in exile, writing verses”). 6. “Historical” personas (“Orophernis”, “The Displeasure of Selefkidis”). 7. Narrative personas and History (“In the year 200 B.C.”, “In a Large Greek Colony, 200 B.C.”, “To Have taken the Trouble”). 8. Dramatic personas and History II (“Plilhellene”, “A Prince from Western Libya”). 9. Narrative/dramatic personas in love poems I (“Dangerous Thoughts”, “He swears”, “In the Tavernas”). 10. Narrative/dramatic personas in love poems II (“Aimilianos Monai, Alexandrian, A. D. 628-655”, “Imenos”).