Ancient Heroes: from Achilles to the Avengers

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Do you feel restless? Are you searching for an answer to the meaning of your life? The ancient Greeks and Romans asked themselves questions like these all the time. Their desire for happiness led to the creation of many heroes and heroines, from the warlike Achilles to the cunning Odysseus, and from the witch Medea to the pious Aeneas who rejects the love of the beautiful Dido. All of them had a relatively quiet life until the point that they chose to give up their comforts and reject their complacency: from that moment they became heroines and heroes, since, as Joseph Campbell argued, "a hero or a heroine is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself." Most of these characters are still famous today. For instance, when George Lucas started the Star Wars Trilogies, he decided to model Luke Skywalker on the life of the ancient heroes Odysseus and Aeneas. In this class, ancient texts and recent movies will introduce us to the lives of these ancient heroes and heroines, from Achilles to Captain America and Wonder Woman. By studying these special characters we will come to understand their ideals and ambitions, and compare them to our own ideals and ambitions. Are you more fascinated by Achilles' desire for immortal glory on the battlefield, or by Aeneas' decision to obey to the will of the gods, regardless of the sacrifice that this implies? This class will raise this and similar questions. Moreover, in their struggle for fulfillment, some of these heroes, like Jason, did not reach the glory they wanted: by reading about their spectacular defeats, we will also reflect on the challenge of suffering our failures and learning from them. Finally, in the last third of the class, we will compare these heroes and heroines with contemporary heroes, namely Western heroes, Star Wars Heroes and Heroines, and a selection of the Avengers. For example, Iron Man's fight against Obadiah Stane will be taken as a contemporary re-enactment of the competition between Odysseus' cunning and Achilles' physical violence. As the Austrian psychoanalyst Otto Rank once said, "everyone is a hero or heroine in birth." If you desire to discover this vocation of yours, and reflect on different paradigms of success and fulfillment, I warmly invite you to join this class.