This course will explore four contemporary novels by four women authors inspired by Homer’s two great epics The Iliad and The Odyssey. Inheriting an almost 3000-year-old literary legacy, the last 25 years have seen an astonishing profusion of Homer-inspired creative works in film, television and literature. Equally notable is the profusion of novels by women authors, comprising twice as many works as those written by male authors. These female-authored novels approach the ancient tales through the eyes of secondary characters, often female, whereby they illuminate aspects of the tales not previously noted. This approach not only sheds new light on familiar stories but also adds depth to our understanding of Homer’s themes, intertwining the ancient with the new in a rich narrative tapestry.
Required Reading
Natalie Haynes, A Thousand Ships. Mantle, 2019.
Madeleine Miller, The Song of Achilles. Harper Collins, 2012.
Pat Barker, The Silence of the Girls. Doubleday, 2018.
Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad. Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.
Meet Your Instructor
Honored to receive 2018’s Ted & Shirley Taubeneck Superior Teaching Award, Bella brings her enthusiastic love of Ancient Greek poetry and culture to her HSP classes: Homer’s brilliant epics, select themes in Greek drama, Ancient Anatolia, more. See this dynamic antiquity in her Daughters of Gaia: Women in the Ancient Mediterranean, translation of Euripides’s Helen in Women on the Edge: Four Plays by Euripides, or Women and Family in Ancient Greece DVD.
Location
POETRY CENTER
Dorothy Rubel Room
1508 E Helen
Tucson, AZ 85721
United States
Located on the SE corner of Helen Street and Vine Avenue, one block north of Speedway and three blocks west of Campbell Ave.
