[September 19 + 21] The beehive and the city of men
Section outline
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Each week the arrangement will be something like the following: On Tuesdays I will spend a few minutes setting the scene, but most of class will be devoted to making sense of a primary source-text. On Thursdays we then explore larger thematic contexts, usually with the aid of an assigned reading. Text 1: Virgil, The Georgics, Book IV (29 BCE). [original Latin] [Czech translation] [Dutch translation] [French translation] [German translation] [Hungarian translation] [Italian translation] [Polish translation] [Russian translation] [Spanish translation]
Context 1: Classical apian metaphors for industry and chastity; the peasant soldier; the Book of Nature metaphor from Pliny to Bacon
Assigned reading: Peter Harrison, "Reading nature: The whole and the parts," The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science (1998), 44-56.
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