Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities: Ironic Voices: Socrates and C.P. Cavafy

This course offers an interdisciplinary perspective on the work of two renowned Greeks who lived almost two thousand years apart: the philosopher Socrates and the poet C.P. Cavafy. Do these figures, both famous for their use of irony, speak to or past each other across the millennia? In what does their irony lie and what rhetorical techniques contribute towards the creation of the voice of each? How do Socrates and Cavafy each buttress or challenge contemporary theories of truth, virtue, and ethics--of the good life? Does the nature and function of irony change depending on whether it appears in philosophy or in literature?