CLAS 24/WLIT 24
Myths/Legends Trojan War
Prof. Jacques Bailly
231 Old Mill
jacques.bailly@uvm.edu
Spring, 2025
University of Vermont

Bailly Office Hours:  1-2:30 T/R. Also, feel free to ask for an appointment: we'll find a time.

Ms. Sofia Podgorski is an MA student who will be our GTA
sofia.podgorski@uvm.edu
Ms. Podgorski's office hours: M/W 1-4, 238 Old Mill

This official syllabus is online, not printed out: bookmark the syllabus and use it online. Changes to the syllabus will be announced in class and updated on this official online syllabus. Significant changes will be announced to your uvm.edu email as well. Refresh your browser to make sure it is not using a stored copy.

NOTE: We will use Brightspace for handing in written assignments and for some grading (keeping a written record of all your grades and keeping a copy of all assignments is a good idea).

Schedule
Final Exam: May 9 at 1:30 in our regular classroom. FINAL REVIEW GUIDE


BAILLY'S COURSE POLICIES

 Students with special needs that are documented, such as disabilities or athletics or the like should contact Prof. Bailly as soon as possible so that suitable accommodations can be made.

UVM has a clear code of academic conduct: http://www.uvm.edu/policies/student/acadintegrity.pdf. Any breaches of the code will be prosecuted as severely as possible. Do not stain your soul or annoy others by violating it.

Electronics: you may use your electronic devices in class ONLY for class-related activities. Please minimize distractions to others (do not do email, browse the web: electronics in class are to be used ONLY for class-related activities). If any breaches of this policy are noted, the individual will lose the privilege of using electronics and be asked to sit in front on the side of the room.

At times, one's life or another's life becomes complicated by difficult things, such as death, illness, psychological issues, or just bad luck or bad choices. You and your fellow students are at a particularly exciting (but also vulnerable and dangerous) stage of your lives: young adulthood and real independence. Fortunately, we care about each other and can help ourselves or others to get help. UVM and the larger community have many many resources to help us deal with such issues. If you or someone you know is suffering, please avail yourself of those resources: Prof. Bailly is ill-equipped to deal with many things, but he wants to help you get help in any way he can. You should also know that he is a mandatory reporter for things like illegal activities or violations of policies: in a way, that means that we can only hold what you say in confidence if it is not dangerous to others or yourself and not seriously illegal.

Please get exercise and sleep. They are absolutely essential for your well being. Walk, ride, run, kayak, climb, step, or dance for a bit every day. And don't push it with lack of sleep: you'll get run down, sick, and become low-functioning.

THE COURSE

General Goal: To acquire familiarity with "The Trojan War." The war includes the return of the heroes to their destinations after the war. Think "Star Wars" fan familiarity: love it!
Why do that? First off, because it is culturally, aesthetically, intellectually, historically, and personally interesting. But also because of further goals that cannot be fully accomplished but will be attempted in part in this course: to understand the role that this war and this literature and associated phenomena have played in various cultures, including Archaic Greek, Classical Greek, Hellenistic Greek, Roman, and other cultures up to and including present ones.
In order to do that, we will need to discuss oral culture/orality, myths/legends, literate culture, archaeology, cultural appropriation, literary genres, construction and maintenance of cultural identity, history, historiography, philology, deciphering lost languages, the alphabet, geography, and more.

Activities: above all, this is a reading course. You must read the assigned reading, and it is extensive. Reading needs to happen before the class for which it is assigned. Simple reading is just sliding the words thru your mind via your eyes, but it is insufficient: what you need to do here is much more complicated. You need to read for understanding the work as well as connecting it to others. To do that, take notes, underline, reread, discuss, and above all, engage with it to make it interesting, love it. It is also a presenting and analyzing course. It is also a presenting course: you will present material to the class. To do that, you have to first absorb it, compose it, re-compose it (i.e. think it, re-think it, write it, re-write it, repeat) and then rehearse it, and rehearse it again (and again). Presenting is rehearsing, constantly improving.

And why do all of that? Because it is interesting and makes anything we do more interesting by making ourselves more interested, and it makes us better at any thing we want to be good at, whether that is writing technical manuals, working in the insurance industry, being a tool and die maker, teaching high school, serving hot dogs, or walking dogs. Like love, being interested and being interesting is an infinite sum game: the more you do it, the more you inspire it in others, and thus the more you do it, and thus the more you inspire it. Simply put, it makes our lives better. Like many other aspects of "the UVM experience," these academic things add up: at the end of several years of social engagements and other merely repetitive fun, what do you have to show for it? A few stories you can tell at social engagements. At the end of 4 years' hard work educating yourself in courses, you actually have something to show for it: knowledge and abilities and interests that make you who you are, and if you do it right, a bunch of social capital from those you studied with. What is more, knowledge and skills are pretty hard to lose or have taken away. What is even more, they will fuel your future. What is even more, the more you devote yourself to them, the more skilfull and knowledgeable friends you will have. But they take time and work: they are "slow fun" rather than the quick and easy fun of a party or attending a game that evaporates quickly. Please think about that as you balance your priorities in the extremely complex life of a university student. Basically, literature is a way to record and create meaning in life, and a life without meaning is, uh, meaningless.

In terms of UVM requirements, this course should fulfil:
AH1: Arts and Literature
Arts and literature focus on the understanding, analysis, and production of creative works in a variety of forms, including dance, multimedia, music, theater, visual arts, and writing, among others. While some classes focus on the development of artistic practices within specific forms and genres, others use critical theories to examine the meanings, cultural contexts, and historical development of artistic works. Together they enable students to recognize different artistic traditions, examine individual art works closely using appropriate methods, express their creativity through the rigorous practice of a particular artistic mode, and think critically about artistic works as they relate to different aspects of society and history, including the examination of practices and problems.
and/or

AH2: Humanities

The humanities involve the study of past and present human thought about the way the world works and how people should behave, exploring big questions with which human cultures have grappled for centuries.  The study of the humanities helps students to understand what it means to be human and how the past has shaped the present, building skills in using primary source evidence to construct rational arguments, and expanding capacity to empathize with other people.


Regular Daily Assignments: above all, do the reading for the day before you get to class (for example, if it says Feb. 31, Iliad 10-12, you should have read books 10-12 of Iliad before you head class on Feb. 31. Other assignments are on the schedule.

Typical Class: hand in a proposed quiz question, we read and talk about a reading passage, there is a quiz, a short presentation or two on a discrete topic or two, connection of that topic to class concerns. You go off and do the after-class-quiz.

Required Texts:
The following are all available in the bookstore, but any translation with line numbers will do.
Graded Assignments: see separate page.

Attendance: in place of attendance, we will have what I am calling 'quizzes.' Particularly appreciated are good questions for future discussion!

Late policy and makeup policy:

First off, let's be clear: this is about 2 things: making sure that you can do your important activities, focus on your health and solving your urgent problems, AND succeeding in this course. We as a community want everyone to succeed and be healthy.
Quizzes cannot be made up, but the policies are fairly forgiving: if you miss so many classes that the forgiving nature of the policies is inadequate to give you a successful way forward, then you have misses so many classes that you might as well not be in this class and so you should not be in the class.
If you do miss a class, to make up what you missed in class, Bailly will post notes on the website.
IF YOU HAVE A PROBLEM INVOLVING ABSENCES, TALK TO BAILLY AS SOON AS YOU REALIZE THERE IS A PROBLEM: DO NOT PUT IT OFF. A quick email will do wonders.
If you have to miss a midterm or final exam, talk to Bailly ASAP: if you didn't talk to Bailly before the midterm or final, your excuse had better be absolutely solid (car accident, fire, woke up that morning with a 104 degree fever AND you have a letter from the dean's office), because ordinarily those things cannot be made up.
Life skill: GET IT IN WRITING: if you only talk to Bailly, later on he may or may not understand the situation the same way you do/did: if you email and Bailly replies back to confirm a plan, you've got it in writing.

OVERALL GOALS of education as Prof. Bailly sees it: you are in a course in the College of Arts and Sciences, not a professional school. Arts and Sciences does not stoop to mere usefulness. It soars and aspires to help you explore the wonders of the world, humanity, and everything, and to become part of that wonder, to add to it and expand our knowledge of it. Sure, along the way, you acquire skills that propel you beyond others in any future money-earning activities, perhaps a career, and result in statistically significant excess of material rewards over others, but that is not the target. Faster and better advancement in a job is merely a nice perk, a fortuitous unintended consequence of your education in Arts and Sciences. Whether you are figuring out the chemistry of rattlesnake venom and how it works, the minimum number of colors needed on a toroidal map, a contemporary art piece by Mark Tansey, or the Trojan War, the aim of the activity is to turbo-charge your mind and soul, to feed it material that will propel it forward to develop its potential as fully as possible, to help you become and be a good citizen of the world, someone who is interested and interesting, not merely a useful cog, but a beautiful informed intelligent soul who contributes.

As I waited to watch the 2017 Full Eclipse of the Sun from an island in a river off of a remote peninsula in western Kentucky (had to kayak to get there), I  met a house appraiser sitting in his webbed aluminum lawn chair, right up to the seat in the water, and his son was there in tow, exploring something further down the shore. He told me, "Education may be expensive, but ignorance is more expensive." Truer words were never spoken.
Embrace the goal of learning as much as you possibly can: when it comes to education, be a maximalist, not a minimalist. You can keep learning all your life, and you will, but this here right now is your best chance to turbo-charge it. Most people aren't as fortunate as I to be in school all their lives, or even as you to have a few years cleared out for this. Take full advantage!

Study and work together. Socialize while engaging your mind, not killing or distorting it.