Taught by William Flesch at Brandeis University, this course offers a survey of some of the greatest and most influential works on Western literature, philosophy and culture, from Homer through Milton. Part of the through line is that every writer covered in the course wrote in a context inherited from the earlier ones, so we look at affiliations between them all. The course used the Lattimore translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and the Hollander translations of Dante. For the other works, any translation or edition is fine.
1. Introductory lecture on the legendary and the real Homer as treated by Dante and Milton: Audio
2. Homeric simile in The Iliad: Audio
3. Iliad, mainly Book 6: Audio
4. Iliad: Hektor frightens Astyanax; Achilleus plays the lyre: Audio
5. Iliad: Achilleus, Patroklos, Hektor, Priam, and the laws of hospitality: Audio
6. The Odyssey: Funeral games and gift-giving (a bit truncated due to glitch): Audio
7. Odyssey: Gifr-giving and hospitality: Audio
8. Odyssey: The Use of oral formulae: Audio
9. Odyssey: Why Odysseus is “no man”: Audio
10. Odyssey: Conclusion, including reunion and two greatest similes in the poem: Audio
11. Plato, Socrates, Zeno, Forms: Audio
12. Plato: The Cave and the argument against poetry: Audio
13. Aristophanes’s Clouds: his Socrates vs. Plato’s: Audio
14. Ovid: and his influence on Milton: Audio
15. Ovid and Virgil and their relation to Homer: Audio
16. Virgil’s sublimity: Audio
17. Virgil’s Homeric recapitulations. Doctor Johnson’s strictures: Audio
18. Dante: Introduction. Terza Rima. Dante’s Virgil. Topography of Hell: Audio
19. Dante: Inferno. Love, justice, desire: Audio
20. Dante: Inferno and Purgatorio: topographic ordering of sins in both, from least bad to worst: Audio
21. Dante: Purgatorio. Contrapasso and allopathic punishment in Purgatory vs. homeopathic punishment in hell: Audio
22. Dante: Purgatorio and Paradiso: Love and gravity; the idea of theodicy: Audio
23: Dante: Paradiso, the Universe, and everything: Audio
24. Milton: Paradiso and Paradise Lost: Audio
25. Milton: Paradise Lost and its antecedents in our reading: Audio
26. Milton: Freedom of conscience and guilt in Paradise Lost: Audio
27. Milton: Paradise Lost and conclusion of the course: parallels between all worlds; angelic sex; love and Adam’s self-sacrifice for Eve and hers for him: Audio
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