From Learning to Read Ancient Greek to Understanding Ancient Greek Literature: New Wine in Old Wineskins

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Chapter 9 From Learning to Read Ancient Greek to Understanding Ancient Greek Literature: New Wine in Old Wineskins

Mónica Durán Mañas https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3881-1410 Universidad de Granada, Spain

ABSTRACT This chapter is a didactic proposal for the teaching of Ancient Greek language and literature under an innovative and interdisciplinary approach. The history of teaching Ancient Greek shows different language acquisition methods that respond to the demands of their times, each of them with its advantages and disadvantages. The author combines diverse approaches to offer a new method for beginners in which students get involved in a stimulating practice that enables them to progress at the rhythm of their choice. The teaching materials are focused on real texts of Ancient Greek literature that work as starting point for an innovative and challenging language teaching for specific purposes approach. The final goal is to achieve student learning of Ancient Greek language through contextualized literary texts in order to get a better understanding of what Ancient Greek culture meant and why it has survived until today.

INTRODUCTION

It is a matter of fact that there is currently a general lack of interest in the humanities and, in particular, in the Ancient Greek language. In a world in which changes occur at a dizzying speed, the focus remains on practical disciplines that offer results immediately applicable to society. In this context, classical languages and their literatures are left out because of their apparent lack of connection with today’s world. Taking a glimpse at Ancient Greek, it can be appreciated right away that it is not an easy language. Its learning requires a leisurely study that at first does not seem useful either. Who is willing today to invest time and energy in learning a language that is not even spoken and whose literature does not

DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-3379-6.ch009

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easily produce the delights of novels such as those by Terry Pratchett or J. K. Rowling? Of course, one can enjoy Greek literature, or even love it, but not always from the first reading. Understanding a text written a number of centuries ago is not straightforward and assimilating the necessary references to enjoy reading it is neither a short nor fast task. Consequently, Ancient Greek language holds less and less space in educational laws, regardless of their background. Taking a look at the educational programs of different countries, more or less the same situation is found everywhere: Ancient Greek is disappearing. Paradoxically, new proposals regarding Ancient Greek teaching and learning have emerged. Some of them replicate ancient classical models of schools, such as the Accademia Vivarium Novum directed by Luigi Miraglia, in Frascati, Italy, in which students learn the way they did at the humanistic schools of the Renaissance and live immersed in Latin and Ancient Greek. Others have developed their own progressive method for high-school students like Mario Díaz Ávila, whose manual is based on W. H. D. Rouse’s A Greek Boy at Home. Others use technology as an anchor for promotion and offer online classes to study and practice Ancient Greek Alive, such as the young Rogelio Toledo Martín, the Paideia Institute1 or the company Classics at Home. If classical languages were once at the base of the Western world’s education system, now they oc- cupy hardly any space at all in the curricula. The latest educational laws mainly promote the subjects that are conventionally known as STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and it is increasingly difficult to find a school where one can study the charming language of Plato. Ancient Greek teachers are an endangered species. It is not the author’s intention here to make an apology of the benefits2 of learning Ancient Greek but rather to show that it is possible and even essential to complete the academic training of the newly coined STEAM3 subjects with a solid knowledge of the classical world. In fact, Greece has been the cradle of Western Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics since the 6th century BC–Art stretches back even further. Ancient Greek authors transmitted their knowledge in written works, and only via reading Ancient Greek it is possible to have access to their content. Therefore, a language approach is unavoidable to understand these writings that are part of what is called Ancient Greek Literature. But there are many ways to approach Ancient Greek language and literature. Taking a look at entry- level school texts for Ancient Greek learning, it can be seen that most of them focus on the study of 5th century BC classical authors such as Lysias, Xenophon or Plato. At the university level, the curriculum is usually extended with texts belonging to earlier periods –Homer, Hesiod, and the Archaic Lyric Po- ets.4 Often only in graduate studies can Mycenean, Post-classical or Byzantine texts be found within the course structures. In any case Ancient Greek is studied according to its periods and dialects, and thus we come to speak, for example, of Homeric Greek or the Ionian Greek of Herodotus. The present proposal takes a different approach. The author has personally met a number of special- ists in different fields from computer scientists to mathematicians, historians and physicians, who have confessed the envy –sometimes frustration– they felt for not being able to read the Ancient Greek authors in their original formats. Without going any further, during a research period in the United States as a Visiting Scholar the author had one of the author’s most passionate Ancient Greek students, a retired full professor and specialist in Old English, who used to say he didn’t want to die without being able to read Homer’s Iliad in Greek. The author is grateful to him for making her think about the close connection that should exist between the Ancient Greek teaching methodology and the motivation of the student, i.e., why the student wants to learn Ancient Greek.

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