Epic: From Gilgamesh to Paradise Lost

The epic is a monumental literary form that is an index to the depth and richness of a culture and the ultimate test of a writer’s creative power. Encyclopedic in its inclusiveness, epic reflects a culture’s origins and projects its destiny, giving definitive form to its vital mythology and problematically asserting and questioning its formative values. This course will study the emergence and development of the epic genre from its archaic and oral origins through the English Renaissance. Our study will be organized around several central purposes. First, we will study the major structural, stylistic, and thematic features of each epic. Second, we will consider the cultural significance of the epic as the collective or heroic memory of a people. Third, we will examine how each poet or narrator implicates his own work of recording and narrating into the defining heroic actions and the cultural and historical themes of the text. Fourth, we will think about how the epic form changes shape under changing cultural and historical circumstances and measure how the influence of epic tradition becomes a resource for literary and cultural power. Texts for the lecture: Homer’s The Odyssey, Vergil’s The Aeneid, Dante’s The Inferno, Milton’s Paradise Lost; for group conferences: Gilgamesh, major narrative portions of Hebrew and Christian scripture.