The Afterlife

The course explores the intersection between fiction, religious visions of the afterlife, and theories of meaning in the pre-modern Mediterranean. We will examine how this otherworldly literature addresses questions of meaning and interpretation as well as of social and political anxieties, crisscrossing individual and public spheres. We’ll read diverse genres of texts engaging with this subject matter–epic poems, accounts of visions and near-death experiences, and prophetic revelations–while discussing modern theorists’ views on these hybrid textual genres. Distribution requirement(s): Global, Poetry, Pre- 1750.