The Trojan War: History or Legend?
Code: LH31805
Dates: July 13-30, 2022
Meets: 11:00 AM to 12 N
Sessions: 6
Location: Creutzburg Center
Course Fee: $89.00
There are still openings remaining at this time.
You’ve read poems about it. Watched movies about it. Seen paintings about it. But how much of it's true? How much of it's fantasy? And how can we tell the kernels of truth apart from the legend? Dismissed as mere fiction for most of the nineteenth century, the Trojan War found a new life of historicity following Heinrich Schliemann’s excavations at the Mound of Hisarlik in Northwestern Turkey during the 1870's. Since then, discoveries such as the Tawagalawa Letter, the Manapa-Tarhunta Letter, the Mykonos Vase, and other clues enliven the mystery of what really happened at Troy at the end of the Bronze Age. Discuss the evidence surrounding the historical Trojan War, and try to develop an informed hypothesis about the history behind the Homeric epics.
William Verdeur
A lifelong resident of the Philadelphia Main Line, I graduated from the Shipley School in 2014 and went on to Trinity College, Connecticut, where I double-majored in Classical Studies and English Literature. I graduated in 2018, Magna Cum Laude, with honors in English, and was inducted into the Classics Honors Society, Eta Sigma Phi. The following year I completed a Post-Baccalaureate program in the Classical languages at the University of Pennsylvania, and then went on to earn a Master’s in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia this past year.N/A
