Approaches to Teaching the Works of C. P. Cavafy
A gay poet-historian writing from and about the edges of empires

Known as a preeminent poet of queer male desire, C. P. Cavafy lived most of his life as part of the Greek minority community in Alexandria, Egypt. He was inspired by the possibilities offered by peripheries, whether sexual, geographic, or historical. Volumes of his poems, widely translated into English, give anglophone readers access to his distinctive mixture of irony and tenderness, directness and subtlety.

This volume will help instructors introduce students to Cavafy's works and explore them from many angles with the help of the extensive archives now available. Essays address teaching Cavafy both as a poetic historian of the Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine worlds and through the lens of postcoloniality. They also explore how he interpreted classical Greek works and how his work has been interpreted by composers, poets, and readers within and beyond Greece and the Greek diaspora.

This volume contains discussion of the following texts: Charles Baudelaire's The Flowers of Evil; Anne Carson's If Not, Winter; C. P. Cavafy's essay "Give Back the Elgin Marbles"; Cavafy's poems "Caesarion," "For Ammonis, Who Died at 29, in 610 A.D.," "The God Abandons Anthony," "The Horses of Achilles," "In the Year 200 B.C.," "Ithaca," "Julian Noticing Negligence," "King Claudius," "27 June 1906, 2 p.m.," "Waiting for the Barbarians," and "Walls"; Mark Doty's My Alexandria; Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet; E. M. Forster's Pharos and Pharillon and Alexandria; Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; Mahmud Tahir Haqqi's The Maiden of Dinshway; Homer's Iliad; Edwar al-Kharrat's Girls of Alexandria and City of Saffron; Robert Liddell's Unreal City; Ibrahim Abdel Meguld's No One Sleeps in Alexandria; Plutarch's Life of Caesar; and Shakespeare's Hamlet and Julius Caesar. The volume also contains discussion of the following musical compositions: Constantine Koukias's The Barbarians, Ron McFarland's String Quartet No. 2 (Windows), and Dimitris Papadimitriou's C. P. Cavafy: An Alexandrian Writing on an Alexandrian. The volume discusses these artworks: Gustave Moreau's The Apparition and Jacob and the Angel, Dante Gabriel Rossetti's The Blessed Damozel and A Sea-Spell, and James McNeill Whistler's Nocturne in Blue and Silver.

1145964261
Approaches to Teaching the Works of C. P. Cavafy
A gay poet-historian writing from and about the edges of empires

Known as a preeminent poet of queer male desire, C. P. Cavafy lived most of his life as part of the Greek minority community in Alexandria, Egypt. He was inspired by the possibilities offered by peripheries, whether sexual, geographic, or historical. Volumes of his poems, widely translated into English, give anglophone readers access to his distinctive mixture of irony and tenderness, directness and subtlety.

This volume will help instructors introduce students to Cavafy's works and explore them from many angles with the help of the extensive archives now available. Essays address teaching Cavafy both as a poetic historian of the Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine worlds and through the lens of postcoloniality. They also explore how he interpreted classical Greek works and how his work has been interpreted by composers, poets, and readers within and beyond Greece and the Greek diaspora.

This volume contains discussion of the following texts: Charles Baudelaire's The Flowers of Evil; Anne Carson's If Not, Winter; C. P. Cavafy's essay "Give Back the Elgin Marbles"; Cavafy's poems "Caesarion," "For Ammonis, Who Died at 29, in 610 A.D.," "The God Abandons Anthony," "The Horses of Achilles," "In the Year 200 B.C.," "Ithaca," "Julian Noticing Negligence," "King Claudius," "27 June 1906, 2 p.m.," "Waiting for the Barbarians," and "Walls"; Mark Doty's My Alexandria; Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet; E. M. Forster's Pharos and Pharillon and Alexandria; Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; Mahmud Tahir Haqqi's The Maiden of Dinshway; Homer's Iliad; Edwar al-Kharrat's Girls of Alexandria and City of Saffron; Robert Liddell's Unreal City; Ibrahim Abdel Meguld's No One Sleeps in Alexandria; Plutarch's Life of Caesar; and Shakespeare's Hamlet and Julius Caesar. The volume also contains discussion of the following musical compositions: Constantine Koukias's The Barbarians, Ron McFarland's String Quartet No. 2 (Windows), and Dimitris Papadimitriou's C. P. Cavafy: An Alexandrian Writing on an Alexandrian. The volume discusses these artworks: Gustave Moreau's The Apparition and Jacob and the Angel, Dante Gabriel Rossetti's The Blessed Damozel and A Sea-Spell, and James McNeill Whistler's Nocturne in Blue and Silver.

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Approaches to Teaching the Works of C. P. Cavafy

Approaches to Teaching the Works of C. P. Cavafy

Approaches to Teaching the Works of C. P. Cavafy

Approaches to Teaching the Works of C. P. Cavafy

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Overview

A gay poet-historian writing from and about the edges of empires

Known as a preeminent poet of queer male desire, C. P. Cavafy lived most of his life as part of the Greek minority community in Alexandria, Egypt. He was inspired by the possibilities offered by peripheries, whether sexual, geographic, or historical. Volumes of his poems, widely translated into English, give anglophone readers access to his distinctive mixture of irony and tenderness, directness and subtlety.

This volume will help instructors introduce students to Cavafy's works and explore them from many angles with the help of the extensive archives now available. Essays address teaching Cavafy both as a poetic historian of the Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine worlds and through the lens of postcoloniality. They also explore how he interpreted classical Greek works and how his work has been interpreted by composers, poets, and readers within and beyond Greece and the Greek diaspora.

This volume contains discussion of the following texts: Charles Baudelaire's The Flowers of Evil; Anne Carson's If Not, Winter; C. P. Cavafy's essay "Give Back the Elgin Marbles"; Cavafy's poems "Caesarion," "For Ammonis, Who Died at 29, in 610 A.D.," "The God Abandons Anthony," "The Horses of Achilles," "In the Year 200 B.C.," "Ithaca," "Julian Noticing Negligence," "King Claudius," "27 June 1906, 2 p.m.," "Waiting for the Barbarians," and "Walls"; Mark Doty's My Alexandria; Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet; E. M. Forster's Pharos and Pharillon and Alexandria; Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; Mahmud Tahir Haqqi's The Maiden of Dinshway; Homer's Iliad; Edwar al-Kharrat's Girls of Alexandria and City of Saffron; Robert Liddell's Unreal City; Ibrahim Abdel Meguld's No One Sleeps in Alexandria; Plutarch's Life of Caesar; and Shakespeare's Hamlet and Julius Caesar. The volume also contains discussion of the following musical compositions: Constantine Koukias's The Barbarians, Ron McFarland's String Quartet No. 2 (Windows), and Dimitris Papadimitriou's C. P. Cavafy: An Alexandrian Writing on an Alexandrian. The volume discusses these artworks: Gustave Moreau's The Apparition and Jacob and the Angel, Dante Gabriel Rossetti's The Blessed Damozel and A Sea-Spell, and James McNeill Whistler's Nocturne in Blue and Silver.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781603296519
Publisher: Modern Language Association
Publication date: 04/26/2025
Series: Approaches to Teaching World Literature
Pages: 240
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.00(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface

PART ONE: MATERIALS

Editions and Translations

Critical Reception

Biographical Resources

Other Primary Sources

Background Reading, Reference Materials, and Teaching Guides

Multimedia Resources and Visual Art

Websites

Teaching Resources

The Digitized Cavafy Archive as a Teaching and Research Resource, by Angeliki Mousiou

PART TWO: APPROACHES

Introduction, by Peter Jeffreys and Demetres P. Tryphonopoulos

Theoretical, Cultural, and Historical Contexts

Teaching Cavafy with Queer Theory, by Cat Lambert

Bringing Cavafy the Egyptiote into the Classroom, by Hala Halim

Cavafy and History: An Interdisciplinary Approach, by Kelly Polychroniou and Loren J. Samons

Cavafy in Comparison: The Politics of Time, by Natalie Melas

Why Cavafy? Why Postcolonial? Teaching the Postcolonial Cavafy, by Martin McKinsey

Translating, Discovering, and Interpreting Cavafy

Cavafy Constructed: Archive, Editions, Translations, by Karen Emmerich

Which Cavafy? Selecting the Right Translation, by Sarah Ekdawi

The Poetics of Liminality: Anti-Economy and Cultural Politics in Cavafy, by Panagiotis Roilos

Intertextual Approaches

Cavafy’s Iliad in the Classroom, by Stamatia Dova

Cavafy’s Decadent Aesthetic, by Peter Jeffreys

Conversing with Cavafy through Music, by Vassilis Lambropoulos

Digital Cavafy: Teaching Poetry through Connective Media, by Foteini Dimirouli

Digital Intertextuality and the Cavafy Archive, by Takis Kayalis

Classroom Contexts

Teaching Cavafy to the Instagram Generation, by Gregory Jusdanis

“Dangerous Things”? Cavafy in the Modern Greek Language Classroom, by Elsa Amanatidou

Cavafy as a Bridge from Classics to Modern Greek Studies, by Johanna Hanink

Notes on Contributors

Survey Respondents

Works Cited

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