Spring 2008

HUMS 630
Epic Tradition from Homer to Milton

Friedberg,Harris A.

01/28/2008 - 05/10/2008
Wednesday 06:00 PM - 08:30 PM

Downey 100

This course will study how our ideas of human nature--categories like life and death, body and soul, shame and guilt, love and sex, honor and glory--evolve while exploring the most important literary genre before the novel. We will be reading those canonical works that constitute the very idea of Western Civilization, articulate its values, and define the heroic--the ideology or implicit value system of patriarchy. They are also works of great power. Starting with the dawn of history and ending with the dawn of the modern era, we will interrogate how those ideas and ideals construct the idea of human nature by seeing how they are constructed chronologically.

We will study Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, Dante's Inferno and Milton's Paradise Lost.

Students are responsible for two papers and a class presentation.

For the first class meeting, students should have read books 1-5 of Homer's Iliad.


Harris Friedberg (B.A. Harvard University; Ph. D. Yale University) is associate professor of English. Recent publications include: "Prose and Poetry: Wimsatt's Verbal Icon and the Romantic Poetics of New Criticism," Poetics Today, 26 (2005). Click here for more information about Harris Friedberg.

ENROLLMENT INFORMATION

Consent of Instructor Required: No

Format: Seminar

Level: GLSP Credits: 3 Enrollment Limit: 18

Texts to purchase for this course:
Dante, INFERNO (Anchor), Paperback

Homer, ILIAD (Penguin), Paperback

Homer, ODYSSEY (Penguin), Paperback

John Milton, PARADISE LOST (Norton), Paperback

Virgil, AENEID (Bantam), Paperback

READING MATERIALS ARE AVAILABLE AT BROAD STREET BOOKS, 45 BROAD STREET, MIDDLETOWN, 860-685-7323 Order your books online

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