Gods/Heroes:Archaic Greek Lit

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

Students read Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, as well as other examples of epic poetry about heroes and gods, such as Hesiod’s Theogony and the Homeric Hymns, that are part of an oral tradition. Through reading this early poetry, students are introduced to an archaic understanding of immortality and to fundamental narrative structures, especially anger, withdrawal, mourning, the journey and return, and epiphany. We also consider a fundamental dichotomy within the epic oral tradition: the trauma of a “beautiful death,” which permeates the Iliad, and the dangers of return, which infuse the Odyssey. Why was it that violence, both physical and psychic, undergirded great heroic poetry? Students also study the nature of an oral tradition: what does it means to say a poem is "oral" and "traditional"? What are the poetics of oral poetry: how is it composed and what makes the poet's job easy or hard? These oldest poetic narratives in the western tradition powerfully influenced later literary and historical genres and continue to move readers as different as contemplatives wishing to know the roots of their intellectual heritage, poets and writers tackling the journey as an adventure of the human spirit, and soldiers traumatized by their experiences in war and return.