Greek Mythology - Online Seminar - Thursdays 6:30-9:30 pm in April

4-week online seminar taught by Bruce King.
Thursdays 6:30 - 9:30 pm in April
4/2, 4/9, 4/16/, 4/23

In this seminar, we’ll treat early Greek myth as double-edged. These stories build order and hierarchy, but they also make room for critique and even resistance.

We’ll start at the beginning. Out of primal Chaos, the cosmos takes shape. Gods and mortals. Humans and animals. The Olympians, ruled by Zeus. It’s a sharply hierarchical world, organized by gender and divided into “natural” roles and social ones.

From there, we’ll follow myth as it tests power, hierarchy, and identity. How does Zeus keep control? What happens when Eros and Aphrodite get involved and desire starts steering events? And where do heroes belong—those complex figures who live in the in-between, between god and human, human and animal?

We’ll spend time with Dionysos, a god of personal and social transformation, including his role in “Orphic” accounts of the soul. His myths open onto big questions about life and death, suffering and joy, and the remarkable journey of a soul.

We’ll end with two great questions. When and why did Olympian myth loosen its grip on the cultural imagination? And why do these stories still feel so alive—so “good to think with”—now?

Readings will include Hesiod’s Theogony; the Homeric Hymns to Demeter, Aphrodite, Apollo, and Dionysos; lyric poetry by Bacchylides, Pindar, and Sappho; selections from “Orphic” traditions; and Euripides’ Herakles and Bacchae.

No Experience Required. All Welcome!

No Greek required. We’ll read everything in English translation, and everyone is welcome.

About Your Instructor

Bruce M. King's teaching and writing focusses on Homeric epic, pre-Socratic philosophy, Athenian tragedy, and comparative studies of epic and of wisdom traditions. He is completing a book entitled Akhilleus Unheroic, which explores the Iliad's dramatization of the end of the heroic and of the relationship of Akhilleus and Patroklos. He has taught at Columbia University, at the Gallatin School of Independent Study (NYU), and at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research; he has been a Fellow of the Center for Hellenic Studies, at the Reid Hall Center for Scholars in Paris, as well as the Blegen Fellow at Vassar College.