Introduction

If one purpose of literature is to hold up a mirror to the society that created it, a related purpose is to reflect upon the act of creation itself. A significant portion of the earliest literature from a variety of cultures tells some version of a creation story. Creation will be the theme of this module, and our point of departure will be as close to “the beginning” of literary history as possible.

This unit starts by exploring several brief creation myths from a variety of cultures, including the ancient Babylonians, the ancient Hebrews, the Norse, and the Native Americans. Myths are different from other kinds of stories because they attempt to explain real phenomena. For example, the Greek myth of Helios tells the story of the god who drives the chariot of the sun, which is pulled by four immortal horses. This story explains why the sun appears to rise in the east, traverse the sky, and then set in the west each day—a phenomenon that we now know to be caused by the spinning of the Earth, rather than the transit of the sun itself. As you read these myths, note similarities and differences between them. Ask yourself what each myth can tell us about the values and norms of the culture that produced it. Note anything that seems strange to you, and anything that seems familiar.

After our discussion of creation myths, we will turn to John Milton’s epic poem, Paradise Lost, which recapitulates and fleshes out the story of humanity’s fall from grace in the book of Genesis. Paradise Lost is richly intertextual, drawing extensively on the Greek and Roman epic tradition (most notably Homer and Virgil), the Judeo-Christian Bible, material from the Biblical apocrypha, and many other sources. Paradise Lost is one of the most influential poems in English and was particularly inspirational to the writers of the Romantic period, such as William Wordsworth and Lord Byron. Their contemporary, Mary Shelley, embedded Paradise Lost into the fabric of her novel Frankenstein, which is the last text in this module. Shelley’s book, which she wrote when she was only eighteen years old, chronicles the story of scientist Victor Frankenstein and his attempt to create life out of cadaver fragments animated by electricity.

These texts portray the dual nature of creation as both a powerful, positive force and a potentially dangerous act that may have unintended consequences.