World Epics

Catalog description

A study of selected epic literature from various cultures and historical eras. Epics studied might include: The Epic of Gilgamesh; the Odyssey; the Aeneid; the Ramayana; The Song of Roland (medieval France); Sundiata . Emphasis throughout will be on developing skills of textual analysis, thesis development, and argumentation, with attention to such themes as: the synthesis of extended narrative and the stability and instability of texts; oral tradition and literacy; the construction of national ethos; the idea of the hero; masculinity and violence; conquest, subjugation, and empire; diachronic and synchronic conceptions of ethnicity and race.