Intermediate Greek: Homer and the Invention of the Human

A word about teaching Ancient Greek: I have experience teaching with Hansen and Quinn and Athenaze. I have also participated in spoken Ancient Greek programs through the Polis Institute. Each of these teaching tools—the rote grammar of H&Q, the emphasis on reading in Athenaze, and the Dynamic Language Development methods of the Polis Institute—has immense value, but of course each has its drawbacks. I strive to find a balance between all of them, depending on the textbook being used, to achieve one principal goal, viz. that students are reading ancient texts with minimal interruption from grammars and dictionaries.

Course description: This Ancient Greek course is for students who have completed one year of Ancient Greek. In it, we read Iliad 6 (using Geoffrey Steadman's excellent edition) followed by Iliad 22 (at which point we set aside Steadman and use de Jong's green & yellow).

Homer is liminal. He is the nexus—the overlapping center in the Venn diagram—of Eastern and Western epic mythology and of oral culture and written literature; he is the first great author and the author who never was. He is the twilight of a lost Archaic Greek world and the dawn of Greek literary history; true history and mythopoetic fabrication; lofty wartime narratives and pulp sci-fi adventures; he is a blend of several Greek dialects, voices, and bards; he has been considered by some as the impetus for creating an alphabet, and he was the catalyst for literary scholarship in the ancient world. Indeed, for readers and writers across millennia and continents, Homer marks the invention of the human. But what kind of human is Homer— a human who never was—inventing? The world of prehistoric Greek heroes is both familiar to us and strange. In this class, we strengthen our grasp of Greek grammar and vocabulary while striving to read Homer's poems as both cultural artifacts and poetry (i.e., wrought artistic works of meter, enjambment, and plural aesthetic experiences). We will approach the text as anthropologists and literary critics.

By the end of this course, students will be familiar with the narrative of the Trojan War (its major plot points, characters, themes, etc.), the poem's reception, and its possible genesis. Students will understand all Homeric/epic forms and be able to scan lines of poetry while discussing the melopoetic effects of the verses.

For this course's syllabus, see the PDF below.