Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Introduction to the central myths and literary sources of the ancient Greeks and Romans. The course investigates the nature, function, and meaning of myths in the classical world. Writing/Breadth-Humanities.

COURSE DETAILS:

This course will focus on the stories the people of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds told: to entertain each other, to explain the nature of their world and its institutions, to reflect on current challenges, and to preserve a memory of their distant past.  Their mythology was a pervasive vehicle for communication, a sort of language.  Because classical mythology is also so thoroughly anthropomorphic, it also raises questions about the nature of the human condition.  These questions have led people to return to its stories continually since antiquity.  While keeping aware of our own, modern perspective, our goal in this course is to begin to master and appreciate these stories and the role they played in the Greek and Roman cultures that produced them.  We shall read the stories in the great literary forms of the ancient Greek world, epic and tragedy, and seek an appreciation of them as storytelling forms.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

To guide the student to a basic understanding of, and a fluency with, the fundamental elements of classical mythology.

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING:

REQUIRED READING NOTES: