Fall 2006 Courses

English 194-01: Epic Traditions (Krier)

M/W/F 1:10-2:10 pm, OLRI 301

In this course we read, in excellent English verse translations, the big heroic-mythological-narrative poems of antiquity: Homer’s Iliad, an epic of war; the Odyssey, the epic of adventure and exploration; Virgil’s Aeneid, which forges an encounter between Homer’s Archaic Greek forms of heroism and the political realities of the Roman empire, 800 years after Homer.  We next turn to epic traditions transformed in the Renaissance: chivalric  epic in Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, with its notes of magic and erotic romance; biblical epic in John Milton’s Paradise Lost.

We’ll also study shorter works that critique, challenge, qualify, or desire aspects of epic and the traditions that followed from them, among them lyrics by the ancient Greek woman poet Sappho and some shorter mythic narratives by Virgil himself about heroes and their families; Shakespeare’s play Antony and Cleopatra, which takes a gamble on the idea that male epic heroism might unite with erotic desire, rather than being undone by it; excerpts from Derek Walcott’s Caribbean engagement with his island-culture predecessor Homer in Omeros.

We will ask:  What are the big building blocks of narrative that big narrative poems create? How do they speak to one another over the centuries, and why do they bother to do this? How do the poets of epic lay out but simultaneously criticize norms of heroism, warfare, adventure, and so on? What are the various roles of male and female characters? How does epic think about the gods, the supernatural, magic?  How do epics think about death, and life?  Why are these works – like so many of the earliest works to survive in all cultures – composed in verse rather than prose?  What features of poetic language do they care about?  Why do they have those staggeringly long catalogues of warriors, and ships, and place-names?  I hope you will come to have a list of your own questions about epic, very early in the course.

We’ll read some works in their entirety, large portions of the rest. When we don’t read an entire epic, as will be the case with the Iliad and the Aeneid, I’ll take you on swift, tours of the bits we don’t read, so that you have a strong sense of the poem’s entire narrative arc.  Please expect the pleasures and challenges of a lot of reading, and of irresistible stories.

The course will include both lecture and discussion: lecture because, with big poems from long ago and far away, people simply need a lot of clarifying information to get launched; discussion because, once launched, epics open up lots of space for challenges of interpretation. Everyone will write three exploratory essays. Final grades will be comprised of this average: each paper grade = 25%; participation & attendance = 25%.

Our books will include: Robert Fagles’ translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey; Robert Fitzgerald’s translation of the Aeneid; the Penguin edition of Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene; the Signet paperback of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra.

Fall 2006 Course Listings