CLAS 208 - The Classical Epic Tradition

FDR: HL
Credits: 3
Planned Offering: Fall 2011

In this course, we read some of the most famous stories of the Western world, from the Iliad and the Odyssey, to Milton’s Paradise Lost and Joyce’s Ulysses, via Vergil’s Aeneid and Lucan’s Civil War. All of these works are epic narratives, each presenting a different concept of the hero, and yet, at the same time, participating in a coherent, ongoing, and unfinished tradition. Questions explored include: the problematic nature of the hero, the relation between poetry and violence, the nature of literary tradition. Crotty.