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ENGL216 Myth, Epic and Romance
10 cp
Prerequisites 1 Literature unit at introductory 100-level
Teaching Organisation A range of teaching procedures, including lectures, tutorials, and screenings will be used.
This unit will first examine exemplary passages from a number of different mythologies, exploring the roles played by myth in the self-awareness, anxieties and aspirations of different cultures and their participants and the different truth-values that can be recognised in mythic narratives. It will go on to investigate the transition from early religio-mythic complexes to the more self-consciously literary constructs of epic and romance, with special emphasis on their use of mythological motifs, on the increasingly problematic relationship between the individual and the demands of his/her social milieu, and on the growing awareness in western literature of historicity as a profoundly complex and vexed issue in mythical constructs. The unit will maintain a general emphasis on the relevance of all these issues to the practice of literature in western cultures.
