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Course Info for ENGL - 373 - 01, Fall 2026
Class number: 3333 Title: English Epic Department: English
Career: Undergraduate Component: Seminar Session: Regular
Instructor's Permission Required: No Grading Basis: Regular Units: 1.00
Enrollment limited to 15 Current enrollment: 15 Available seats: 0
Start date: Tuesday, September 8, 2026 End date: Wednesday, December 23, 2026 Mode of Instruction: In Person
Schedule: W: 6:30PM-9:00PM, 115V - 106 Instructor(s): Wheatley, Chloe
Prerequisite(s): None
Distribution Requirement: Meets Humanities Requirement
Note: For English majors, this course fulfills the pre-1800, elective, and additional literature or film requirements. For all students, it fulfills the College’s HUM requirement.
Course Description:
This course, we will begin by reading, in English translation, the poetry of Homer; we will then consider how poets such as John Milton and William Blake (as well as later poets such as W.H. Auden, Derek Walcott, Alice Oswald, and/or A.E. Stallings) have absorbed, reworked, and subverted the conventions of an epic tradition. We will have a chance to explore how contributions to the epic genre – through translation, reimagination, illustration and erasure – have in an English language context reworked the connection of past, present and future; conveyed the costs of war; and celebrated the role of poetry in forging ever-evolving concepts of connection and community. This course is research-intensive, and fulfills the requirement of a pre-1800 course in the English major.