MWF  10:10-11:00 AM
This course carries culture studies and A & H credits.

Before Homer Simpson, there was just Homer, the father of poets.
For roughly two millennia throughout Europe and the Mediterranean,
the epic genre was celebrated as the crowning achievement of poetry:
ambitious, monumental, emotional, learned, and shocking.  For
generations of poets, epic has served as a repository for the
history of nations, revelations of divine will, the secrets of the
cosmos, codes of conduct, visions of the afterlife, and explorations
of the human psyche.  It has inspired such modern authors as J. R.
R. Tolkien and Frank Herbert, as well as TV shows like The Simpsons
and Southpark.  This course is an in-depth introduction to the
genre: its style, subject matter, narrative techniques, structure,
historical tradition, and influence.  Our texts will include Homer’s
Iliad, Vergil’s Aeneid, Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things, Dante’s
Purgatorio, and John Milton’s Paradise Lost. We will be sampling the
classical, biblical, and vernacular traditions, and looking at key
issues such as definitions of heroism and the transformation of
cultural mythologies.  We will be especially concerned with the
central question of whether epic glorifies or deconstructs imperial
power and heroic warfare.  The scope of the course welcomes students
interested in literature and theory, mythology, history, religious
studies, political science, sociology, philosophy, anthropology, and
cultural studies.  Assignments will consist of two essays, one exam,
two in-class presentations, and brief writing assignments.  There
are no prerequisites for this course.