After defining "Neoplatonism" with reference to Plato's Phaedo, Symposium, and Phaedrus, the course will consider the relationships among Homer's Odyssey, Plotinus's Enneads, Virgil's Aeneid, Augustine's Confessions, and Dante's Divine Comedy. The focus will be on coming home to the "source and origin" after having been away and, as the philosopher Plotinus puts it, having been "a stranger in something strange". Students will be invited to work on other literary and philosophical treatments of this theme in English, Irish or American poetry and writing. A principal concern of the course is language "sung, spoken, and written". Accordingly, the course will applicable to, and count for the Philosophy and Communications track.
