Dear Poets and Bleaders — A Request [by Sharon Mesmer]

This summer at the New School I'll be teaching a literature/poetry course I've been wanting to teach for a long time:  "The Muse Singing: Myth in Poetry from Classical Times to Now."  Dear poets and bleaders, I would love and be eternally grateful for suggestions regarding non-Western poetic responses to the Greek myths, from any era, any country.  I'll post the course description below and the texts I'm already using.  If you have any ideas, post them in the comments field.  Many thanks in advance!

THE MUSE SINGING: MYTH IN POETRY FROM CLASSICAL TIMES TO NOW
Sharon Mesmer, Instructor / Humanities Division

The artful, emotive tellings of timeless myth-stories by poets of the classical world continue to enthrall us today.  What is it about these mysterious and beautiful tales that has so captured the poetic imagination for so long?  How, to paraphrase Walter Pater, have poets “become the depositaries of the instinctive products of the imagination, fixing its outlines and developing its situations”?  To gain a new appreciation of four of the most central and familiar Greek myths (Demeter and Persephone; Cupid and Psyche; Daedalus and Icarus; Orpheus and Eurydice) we’ll first examine their oldest known literary sources (The Homeric Hymn to Demeter; Apuleius; Ovid) and read short interpretations by well-known scholars such as Edith Hamilton, Walter Pater, Jane Harrison, Guy Davenport and Joseph Campbell.  Finally, we’ll do close readings of modern and contemporary poetic retellings of each tale and discuss connections/ disconnections with the original sources.  Access to the films “La Belle et Le Bête/Beauty and the Beast” (as a modern interpretation of the Cupid and Psyche story) by Jean Cocteau and “Orfeu Negro/Black Orpheus” by Marcel Camus will also be provided through Blackboard.  

TEXTS:
MYTHOLOGY: TIMELESS TALES OF GODS AND HEROES
Edith Hamilton

METAMORPHOSIS
Ovid, translation by David Raeburn

THE HOMERIC HYMN TO DEMETER
Helen Foley, editor

CUPID AND PSYCHE
Apuleius

ORPHEUS AND COMPANY
Deborah de Nicola, editor

GODS AND MORTALS
Nina Kossman, editor

From Google Books:
GREEK STUDIES
Walter Pater (short excerpt)

PROLEGOMENA TO THE STUDY OF GREEK RELIGION
Jane Harrison (short excerpt)

               

Comments

[DL]

Sounds like a great course, Sharon. What a pleasure to have you blogging for us on this Thanksgiving week.

[Sharon Mesmer]

Thank YOU, David! The pleasure was most definitely mine. Now,if I can only do something with my own neglected blog. Btw, I'm working on a response poem to those lines from Eliot that you posted earlier. We'll see ... !