Religion and Literature in the Greco-Roman World

4 credits · Undergraduate

Religion and literature are two conceptual systems through which people and societies organize disparate experiences into meaningful wholes. In the ancient pagan societies of Greece and Rome, where a shared experience of both religion and literature was a defining element of the community, these two systems were particularly interdependent. In this course we will read a variety of texts (e.g. epic, philosophy, tragedy) and examine the complex ways that literary concepts such as plot, character, closure and genre interact with religious concepts such as causation, moral justice, divine power, cosmology. No knowledge of Greek or Latin required.