Reception of Antiquity

4 credits · Undergraduate

Participants in this course can expect to accomplish two goals: they will become familiar with a fair amount of the two epics attributed to Homer; and they will learn how classical texts are received by later generations, with Homer as the centerpiece example. That is, we will look at the way in which classical texts are transmitted from the past and how they have survived (or have failed to survive) from antiquity into the present; how readers have sought to make sense of them and to locate them in reality; and how Homer?s originally sung texts were changed while still remaining identifiably ?Homeric,? and in this way came to constitute a Homeric tradition that continues to flourish today.