Intro to Greek Literature

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

This course surveys ancient Greek literature from the Archaic period down to the Roman period (ca. 750 B.C. to A.D. 400), with special attention to authors such as Hesiod, Homer, Sappho, Pindar, Aeschylus, Euripides, Callimachus and Theocritus. In particular, the course will focus on the features of various prose and poetic genres such as epic, hymn, tragedy, comedy, history and pastoral. A central theme of the course will be the profound importance of the Homeric poems (both the Iliad and the Odyssey) as both works of art in their own right and culturally definitive artifacts, and we will consider in detail what various Greek reactions to and interpretations of these poems reveal about the cultural and literary history of the ancient world.