COURSE DESCRIPTION
Put down your phone and pick up your colored pens, notebooks, and highlighters! Remember the joy of reading! We are going to read The Iliad. This will be "part class, part book club." The Iliad was written by Homer (we think) around 850 B.C., but the myths and stories surrounding it date back to the late Bronze Age. It is an epic poem, but don't let that scare you: It reads like a story. The story takes place in the 11th year of the Trojan War. The great warrior Achilleus gets in a fight with King Agamemnon and refuses to continue fighting in the war, which leads to disaster for the Greeks. If you have not read serious literature in a long time, you will receive lots of help in the form of a Study Guide and lectures that will help to explain the historical and literary background. We'll meet online once a week. Ellen Finnigan will give a short presentation followed by live discussion.
COURSE SCHEDULE & LOGISTICS
Course Duration:
- Six weeks
Weekly work:
- About 50 pages of reading
- 20-30 minutes of optional video lectures
Live Discussion Schedule:
- Tuesdays, June 3 - July 8
- First class on June 3 will be 90 minutes; all other classes will be 75 minutes
- 5 p.m. Pacific, 6 p.m. Mountain, 7 p.m. Central, 8 p.m. Eastern
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Live meetings happen in an online classroom -- not on Zoom!
Questions?
Email Ms. Finnigan
Course Text
The Iliad by Homer
translated by Richmond Lattimore
(not included with purchase)
Study Guide
Let's Read The Iliad! Study Guide
created by Ms. Finnigan
(included with purchase)
PREVIEW
Hi, I'm Ms. Finnigan
I received my B.A. in English from Boston College and my M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Montana. I like to say "I was teaching online before it was cool." I taught high school at Kolbe Academy Online for nine years, and before that at a hybrid school called St. John Bosco in Atlanta.
I've been teaching The Iliad online for over 10 years. Rather I should say I've been studying The Iliad alongside my high school students. I never grow tired of it. The thing about poetry is: There's always something new to discover! I hope my Study Guide and lectures, informed by a decade of teaching, will help students not only understand but appreciate this ancient classic.
A Note About Religion
The Study Guide is "Catholic and Classical". It deals with moral, spiritual, and philosophical questions from a Christian perspective, and it draws on the 2,000-year-old intellectual tradition of the Catholic Church to articulate and present that perspective. However, this is not a theology course. The religious content is very general and should be acceptable to any Christian, whether Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant.
Not a believer? Perhaps, you will find the religious content interesting from a cultural or historical perspective. After all, the pagans who told these stories for hundreds of years were religious people: They believed in divine beings, they engaged in religious rituals, they worshipped, they prayed. Most of them eventually converted to Christianity. This Study Guide will sometimes ask you to think about differing concepts of the divine, make connections with Sacred Scripture, or engage in introspection and spiritual reflection. If these exercises are not valuable to you, you can easily skip them, because they are clearly labeled, and you will still get a lot out of this study!
"Nothing that people's of Europe have since produced is worth the first poem to have appeared among them."
-- Simone Weil
Why Read The Iliad
Not convinced? Give me five minutes...(actually six and a half...)