EN101: Epic into Novel - Honours Variants – EN2J4/EN3J4

Overview

This module will introduce students to aspects of epics and epic traditions in Western and other literatures, making use of a range of longer and shorter texts, and explore ways in which novels engage with epic traditions. The module will be taught through weekly lectures and seminars that will introduce contextual and critical information and be a space for discussion of particular texts. Works to be studied include The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Odyssey, Paradise Lost, Tom Jones and The Penelopiad.

Teaching

Lecture locations for 2026-27 tbc.

Seminar locations will appear on your Tabula timetable once you have signed up for a seminar group at the beginning of term.

Syllabus

Course Outline and Lecture List

Books Required for 2026/27

Please obtain copies of the books listed below. It is important that you use the translations and editions specified.

Secondhand copies are widely available from online retailers if you wish to reduce costs. The department also has pre-owned copies of set books donated by previous students and staff.

• The Epic of Gilgamesh, trs. Andrew George (Penguin Classics, 2020) - please read the 'Standard Version' (approximately the first 100 pages of the George edition).
• Homer, The Iliad, trs. Caroline Alexander (London: Vintage, 2015) -- we will be reading the following extracts:
  • Books 1, 3, 6, 9, 10, 16, 22, and 24 in full and Book 12, lines 290-330 (Sarpedon to Glaukos) and Book 18, lines 368-617 (description of the shield of Achilles).
• Homer, The Odyssey, trs. Emily Wilson (New York and London: Norton, 2018)
• Vergil, The Aeneid, trs. Shadi Bartsch (London: Profile Books, 2020)
• Petronius, Satyricon (Oxford World’s Classics edition, trs. P. G. Walsh)
• D.T. Niane, Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali (Longman African Writers series, 2^nded., 2006).
• R.K. Narayan, The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic (Penguin Classics, 2006).
• Milton, Paradise Lost. An annotated text is available in The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Volume B: The Sixteenth Century and The Early Seventeenth Century, ed. by Stephen Greenblatt et al, 11th edition (2024) (ISBN 9781324062639) -- this is the same anthology you will be using for part of your work on EN121/EN2J5/EN3J5: Mediaeval and Early Modern Literature.
• Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling ed. Thomas Keymer and Alice Wakely (Penguin, 2005)
• Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2005)
• Madeline Miller, Circe (London: Bloomsbury, 2018)
• Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, The Perfect Nine (Harvill Secker, 2020)

Recommended Summer Reading

• To get ahead with the primary reading you could read The Epic of Gilgamesh or get started on The Odyssey.
• For an introduction to epic, which is the focus of Term 1, you could look at Anthony Welch's The Epic: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2024).