World of Heroes

SAMPLE READINGS

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PRIMARY SOURCES:

 

The Iliad of Homer (Lattimore trans.)

The Odyssey Homer 

Ovid, Metamorphosis

Sophocles, Ajax

Gorgias, Encomium of Helen

Euripides, Helen

Euripides, Polyphemos

Excerpts from Apollodorus, Herodotus, Hesiod, Pindar

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SECONDARY LITERATURE:

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Lord Raglan, The Hero: A Study in Tradition, Myth and Drama (1936)

Otto Rank, The Myth of the Birth of the Hero (1914)

Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) 

J. Lang and P. Trimble, “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? An Examination of the American Monomyth and the Comic Book Superhero” Popular Culture 22, 3, 157-173.

Sherry Ortner, “Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?” (1974): 68-87.

Gregory Nagy, "The Epic Hero" in Companion to Ancient Epic (2005).

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