Event

Lecture Series: 
The Penn Public Lectures on Classical Antiquity and the Contemporary World 

Feeling: Literature in Ancient Greece and India

Register Here: Registration link coming soon

Speaker: Phiroze Vasunia, Professor of Greek at University College London

Respondent: TBA

Lecture 2: "Desire"

Abstract: Desire, and especially female desire, has a special place in both ancient Greek and ancient Indian lyric poetry.  This lecture will compare the Greek poems and fragments of Sappho with those by women writers of Sanskrit kavya literature from South Asia.  The talk will show how and why the emotions of love, lust, and yearning are associated with a particular poetic genre and a particular gender in these ancient traditions.

The series is supported by the Arete foundation in honor of Edward E. Cohen.