COMP 104
Telling Tales in Ancient Greece Fall 2023
Division I Writing Skills
Cross-listed CLAS 105

One-eyed monsters, magical spells, and trips to the moon: Greek literature is replete with tales of fantastic creatures and wild adventures. These ancient stories give us valuable opportunities to explore early understandings of “fiction,” the development of narrative, and the construction of the storyteller in both poetry and prose. In this course, we will read texts from Homer’s Odyssey (8th cent. BCE) to Heliodorus’ Aethiopica (4th cent. CE), alongside a range of scholarly approaches to them. We will pay particular attention to the prose fiction of the Roman imperial era, including both the texts traditionally called the “ancient novel” as well as the various forms of biography, ethnography, and mythography adjacent to them. Throughout, we will explore narratives and representations of gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, class, and cultural identity, reflecting on how our primary sources engage with their complex social and political contexts. All readings will be in English.