Epic Forms
CLASPHIL 2009
Subject & Catalog Number
Course Information
Description
This seminar will focus on the formal structures of the epic genre. Through a comparative approach, we will study the narrative, stylistic and linguistic components of the epic genre across the Greco-Roman epic tradition. Formulae, sacrifices, arming scenes, combat and death, catalogues, storms, and messenger scenes are some examples of recurrent epic structures. What can the handling of these mundane elements of the epic genre tell us about each poet’s narrative approach and poetics? What flexibility for innovation is created by the fixity of these structures? What, if any, is the ideology of epic forms and how does it evolve? A comparative study of Homer’s Iliad and Virgil’s Aeneid will be used as a point of departure for the study of each device. Class participants will be asked to adopt one other epic work (e.g. Odyssey; Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica; Ovid, Metamorphoses; Quintus of Smyrna, Posthomerica, etc.) and become class experts over the course of the semester. Scholarship on ancient epic will be read side-by-side with modern theoretical work on epic narrative, time and space.
Course Notes
Depending on the topic for their final paper, classical philology students can get credit towards their Greek or Latin seminar requirement.
Recommended Prep
Proficiency in at least one ancient language sufficient to be able to read assigned texts in the original (about 200–400 lines per week).
Available for Harvard Cross Registration
