This course will feature a detailed examination of the Iliad and Odyssey, with a focus on the oral-formulaic background of the poems and the wider context of their creation. Topics will include the historicity of the Trojan war, orality and literacy in archaic Greece, the question of one or many Homer(s), the structure of the poems, and the degree to which Homeric concepts (of mind, time, speech, glory, and justice, among others) match our own.