The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours (Hours 1-5): Epic and Lyric

HUM 2.1x. The first of five modules on The Ancient Greek Hero, “Epic and Lyric” looks at ancient Greek heroes from the perspective of two different but related media of poetry and songmaking, epic and lyric. The major focus is Achilles, especially as viewed through the lens of the Homeric Iliad and through the “rose-colored glasses” of Sappho’s songs. While the epic of the Iliad is typical of verbal art that is performed by and for men, the lyric songs of Sappho derive from traditions of singing performed mainly by women of all ages, including adolescents about to be initiated into womanhood. These “women’s traditions” are best known for two kinds of singing, laments and love songs, which are interchangeable in contexts that will surprise the modern mind. Another surprise, as we will see, is that the Iliad too contains embedded “quotations” of such laments and love songs, and that our first impression of this epic as a “men’s tradition” obscures the fact that Homeric poetry channels the songs of women as well as men. A perfect expression of such “channeling” is the figure of Achilles himself, who was admired by Greek song culture as a virtuoso singer of laments and love songs in his own right. An analysis of Homeric passages that “quote” the singing of Achilles will be an integral part of our overall experience in close reading.

Gregory Nagy is the Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University, and is the Director of the Center for Hellenic Studies, Washington, DC. In his publications, he has pioneered an approach to Greek literature that integrates diachronic and synchronic perspectives. His books include The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry (Johns Hopkins University Press), which won the Goodwin Award of Merit, American Philological Association, in 1982; also Pindar's Homer: The Lyric Possession of an Epic Past (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), Poetry as Performance: Homer and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), Homeric Questions (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996), Homeric Responses (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003), Homer’s Text and Language (University of Illinois Press 2004), Homer the Classic (Harvard University Press, online 2008, print 2009), and Homer the Preclassic (University of California Press 2010). He co-edited with Stephen A. Mitchell the 40th anniversary second edition of Albert Lord’s The Singer of Tales (Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature vol. 24; Harvard University Press, 2000), co-authoring with Mitchell the new Introduction, pp. vii-xxix. Professor Nagy has taught versions of this course to Harvard College undergraduates and Harvard Extension School students for over thirty-five years. Throughout his career Nagy has been a consistently strong advocate for the use of information technology in both teaching and research.

Leonard Muellner is Professor of Classical Studies at Brandeis University and Director for IT and Publications at Harvard's Center for Hellenic Studies. Educated at Harvard (Ph.D. 1973), his scholarly interests center on Homeric epic, with special interests in historical linguistics, anthropological approaches to the study of myth, and the poetics of oral traditional poetry. His recent work includes "Grieving Achilles," in Homeric Contexts: Neoanalysis and the Interpretation of Oral Poetry, ed. A. Rengakos, F. Montanari, and C. Tsagalis, Trends in Classics, Supplementary Volume 12, Berlin, 2012, pp. 187-210, and “Homeric Anger Revisited,” Classics@ Issue 9: Defense Mechanisms, Center for Hellenic Studies, Washington, DC, September, 2011.

Kevin McGrath is an Associate of the Department of South Asian Studies at Harvard University. His research centers on the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata; he has published four works on this topic, The Sanskrit Hero, Stri, Jaya, and Heroic Krsna, and is presently concluding a study of epic kingship and preliteracy. McGrath is Poet in Residence at Harvard’s Lowell House, and his most recent publications are Eroica and Supernature, which are both I-books. He does fieldwork in the Kacch of Western Gujarat, studying kinship, landscape, and migration. The hero as a figure for humanistic analysis is the focus of much of McGrath's scholarly work, particularly as expressed in the poetry of Bronze Age preliterate and premonetary culture.

Jeff Emanuel is HarvardX’s inaugural Senior Fellow. As a founding member of HarvardX, Jeff brings a commitment to top-quality online education to his role managing the development and publication of, and conducting research into, the organization's online learning experiences in archaeology and the humanities. Additionally, as a nautical archaeologist, Jeff's academic research and publications focus on maritime affairs in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean during the transition from the Late Bronze to the Early Iron Age, with particular emphasis on naval warfare and the development and spread of maritime technology in this key transitional period, as well as its connections to ancient Greek epic. His recent publications include “Cretan Lie and Historical Truth: Examining Odysseus’ Raid on Egypt in its Late Bronze Age Context” (G. Nagy festschrift, 2012), “Sherden from the Sea: The Arrival, Integration, and Acculturation of a Sea People,” Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections 4 (2013), 14-27, and “The Sea Peoples, Egypt, and the Aegean: Transference of Maritime Technology in the Late Bronze–Early Iron Transition (LH IIIB–C),” Aegean Studies 1 (2014), 13-51.

Natasha Bershadsky recently received her PhD degree from the University of Chicago. Her thesis, Pushing the Boundaries of Myth: Transformations of Ancient Border Wars in Archaic and Classical Greece, explores the interconnections of history, myth, ritual and politics. She is also interested in the Greek perception of poet as a hero, and the reverberations of this idea in the later conceptions of the figure of author in poetry and fiction. Her publications include "The Unbreakable Shield: Thematics of Sakos and Aspis," Classical Philology 105 (2010): 1–24, and “A Picnic, a Tomb and a Crow: Hesiod's Cult in the Works and Days,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 106 (2011) 1–45.

Claudia Filos is Manager for Curriculum and Community Development at Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies. She holds an MA from Brandeis University, and her thesis is titled "Steadfast in a Multiform Tradition: ἔμπεδος and ἀσφαλής in Homer and Beyond". Her teaching and research interests include Homer, oral poetics, the cult of saints, and comparative work on the reception of classical themes and diction during late antiquity and the romantic period. She is committed to improving opportunities for meaningful research by undergraduates and nontraditional scholars and to promoting the study of classical languages and literature outside the university setting.