Storytelling and Mythmaking: Modern Odysseys

In 1923, the poet T.S. Eliot wrote an essay in praise of James Joyce's Ulysses' a novel that adapted episodes of Homer's Odyssey into the daily life of twentieth-century Dublin. "It has the importance of a scientific discovery. No one else has built a novel upon such a foundation before: it has never before been necessary, In using the myth, in manipulating a continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity, Mr. Joyce is pursuing a method which others must pursue after him, Instead of the narrative method, we may now use the mythical method. "In this class, as both readers and writers, we will make use of this "mythical method" ourselves, as critical readers and creative writers. Using the same ancient material as a foundation, we'll follow a host of modern writers and critics who have been inspired by Homer to create new stories and to theorize narrative itself. These writers include Joyce, Franz Kafka, Derek Walcott, Junot Díaz, Margaret Atwood, Louise Glück, and Daniel Mendelsohn.