$95.00
Instructor: Douglas Kenning
Thursdays, April 13 – May 18, 3:00 – 5:00 PM, East Recreation Center
6-week session, Cost: $95
Course Description:
Discover Sicily from its mythic roots in works such as Homer’s Odyssey through its’ peak as the wealthiest part of the ancient Greek world that taught civilization to the Romans and later helped to ignite the Renaissance. It is a history, explored through hundreds of beautiful images, that is alternatively glorious and tragic.
Course Details:
“Italy without Sicily leaves no image in the soul;
here lies the key to everything.”
(Göethe in Palermo, April 13, 1787)
Let us rediscover the Sicily once known to every schoolchild, the Sicily that gloried in two Golden Ages, when twice she was a turning point of Western Civilization. We begin with mythic Sicily–Demeter and Persephone, Skylla and Charybdis, Homer’s Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid. This leads us to the Sicily that became the wealthiest part of the ancient Greek world, that defeated Athens, that taught civilization to the Romans and through them to us. Then, under Arab and Norman rule, she helped to ignite the Renaissance. Hers is a history repeatedly magnificent, mythic, monster-plagued, and mistreated, alternatively glorious and tragic, a story we shall explore through hundreds of beautiful images.
This course will consider Sicily from its first representations in Western consciousness through its many iterations in the classical world: a history repeatedly magnificent, mythic, monster-plagued, and mistreated. It is a story that is alternatively glorious and tragic, which we will explore through hundreds of beautiful images.
Douglas Kenning, Ph.D. lives half the year in the Bay Area, lecturing on Mediterranean histories and cultures, and half the year in Sicily, where he runs “Sicily Tour” and leads history and myth-focused tours.
