The Grandeur of Epic: Poetry, Narrative, and World from Homer to Evolutionary Biology

Explores the mystery and power of epic. This ancient word, which at its root means "what is spoken," first classified certain traditions of archaic Greek poetry, especially Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. It now appears everywhere from slang to contemporary scientific discourse. Though some might dismiss its proliferation as an accident of everyday speech, the course will take the phenomenon of "epic" seriously, asking what it is about this oldest of genres that continues to inspire our collective imagination. Readings will include works of epic as well as theoretical and philosophical works on narrative, religion, and science. We will read substantial selections from the Iliad, Hesiod's poems, the Hebrew Bible, the Gospels, Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, J.R.R. Tolkien's Silmarillion, and Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea.