LBCL 292 — Modes of Expression and Interpretation I
Professors: Ivana Djordjevic, Ariela Freedman
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All course books
Odyssey
Theban Plays
Plato’s Symposium
Aristotle Poetics
On the Nature of the Universe
The Aeneid
Metamorphosis
Augustine Confessions
Beowulf
Homer's epic follows Odysseus's ten-year voyage home from the Trojan War, filled with monsters, gods, and trials of endurance, alongside his wife Penelope's long wait and his son Telemachus's search for him.
Sophocles' trilogy — Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone — traces the downfall of the house of Thebes through fate, pride, and the conflict between civic law and family duty.
Plato's dialogue stages a drinking party where guests, including Socrates and Aristophanes, each deliver a speech in praise of love, building toward a philosophical account of desire's true object.
Aristotle's foundational work of literary theory analyzes tragedy, plot structure, and catharsis, establishing critical vocabulary — like mimesis and hamartia — still used in literary study today.
Lucretius's philosophical poem lays out Epicurean physics and ethics in verse, arguing that the universe is made of atoms and void, and that understanding nature frees people from fear of death and the gods.
"Fitzgerald's [translation] is so decisively the best modern Aeneid that it is unthinkable that anyone will want to use any other version for a long time to come." —New York Review of Books
Virgil's great epic transforms the Homeric tradition into a triumphal statement of the Roman civilizing mission—translated by Robert Fitzgerald.
Ovid's sprawling narrative poem retells dozens of myths of transformation, from Daphne into a laurel tree to Pygmalion's statue come to life, and became a foundational source for later Western literature and art.
Augustine's spiritual autobiography recounts his restless youth, intellectual searching, and conversion to Christianity, blending memoir with philosophical reflection on memory, time, and the nature of God.
This Old English epic follows the warrior Beowulf as he battles the monster Grendel, Grendel's mother, and, in old age, a dragon, exploring themes of heroism, mortality, and legacy.