INQ-270 | In Search of the Trojan War

Full Title: In Search of the Trojan War

Topic Description:

For at least three thousand years, the tale of the war between the Greeks and Trojans – and the ultimate destruction of the city of Troy – has captured the imaginations of one generation after another. For the ancients, it was an account of their past; in the Middle Ages, a source of literary tropes; early modern critics regarded it as high literature, but completely fictitious; while modern scholarship has revealed a more complex relationship between history and legend. While no serious person would argue that Homer’s account exactly reflects factual reality, historians, archaeologists, linguists, and literary analysts have come to appreciate that his poetry echoes a world that collapsed around the same time Troy was destroyed. In this course, we examine not just the content relevant to the legend of the Trojan War, but focus on the modern intellectual quest to understand the world to which the saga of Troy belonged.

Counts as Global? No

Topic Approved: February 2024