The Epic Tradition: from Homer to Milton

This course will engage with the epic tradition from its origins in the ancient eastern Mediterranean to the early modern period. Epic, as the earliest genre and example of ancient literature in the Western canon, is foundational to our ideas of literature and our myths of society, national identity, and aspirational achievement. In this course we will read Gilgamesh, the earliest Near Eastern epic, the Iliad, the Aeneid, and selections from the Odyssey, the epics that formed the cores of ancient Greek and Roman literature, as well as medieval and early modern epics (Inferno, Paradise Lost) that draw on these rich and influential traditions.