Backgrounds to Western Literature is an on-line course which attempts the impossible task of surveying the backgrounds to Western literature. I say impossible because no one course can cover everything of importance that helped create modern (Renaissance and after) Western literature, but we can have a lot of fun and read a lot of great literature trying.
The course is divided into four sections, on Greek literature, Roman literature, the Bible, and Medieval Literature. We will read Homer’s Odyssey (in a new translation by Emily Wilson), Virgil’s Aeneid, and shorter poems and works of prose by many of the greatest Classical writer, as well as selections from the Old and New Testament and two shorter epics, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Song of Roland. Women writers from the Classical and Medieval periods will be included as well, part of a look at lyric poetry to complement the epic or narrative poems we are reading.
The course will be taught online and in a seminar format: we will explore these poems together. Written work for the course will be a short paper on each of the four sections; there will be no final exam.