Troy and Ancient Epic

Description

No cycle of myths has had a stronger grip on the western imagination than the saga of the Trojan War and its aftermath.  Originating in ancient Greece over 3,000 years ago the stories concerning Achilles, Helen, Odysseus (aka Ulysses), Aeneas and other great heroic figures resonate today in art, film and stage adaptations as well as in ever-forthcoming translations of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey (eight-seventh centuries BC) and Vergil’s Aeneid (first century BC).  This course focuses on these three poems, which remain among the very greatest literary works of all time, inspiring literature, art, philosophy, music and film for over two millennia.  While Homer's Iliad ostensibly deals with one episode at Troy — the anger of the greatest warrior of all, Achilles — it profoundly explores the nature of heroic warfare and it costs for combatants and civilians alike, affording insights into the human condition; the Odyssey tells of the ten year return of the Greek hero Odysseus to his native Ithaca during which he encounters fantastic monsters and sorceresses only to face even an greater challenge awaiting him in his own home; Vergil's Aeneid creatively reworks much in Homeric epic to tell of the Trojan hero Aeneas who, with fellow refugees from Troy, travels to Italy to establish the origins of Rome, becoming an exemplar of Roman virtues in the process.  Other ancient writings and artworks will also come under consideration when relevant to the themes and characters of these epics.  Homer's Iliad and Odyssey will be read in the translations of R. Lattimore and Vergil's Aeneid that of C. Day Lewis. The course will discuss what the poems have in common as well as their differences: conceptions of heroism, the link between the human and the divine, relations between the sexes, the ambivalence of war, and how the poems address the beliefs and values of their time.  In short, students who complete this course will come to see that the Iliad, Odyssey and Aeneid in all their grandeur, passion, richness and intensity are epic in every sense of the word.