At the start of every new year in the Core Curriculum, we like to begin at the very beginning, with the Epic of Gilgamesh. And while it technically remains the same story from year to year, we’re always delighted to watch how different students and professors bring their own views and interpretations to the text. This year, the students in the first CC101 lecture wasted no time shooting up their hands to ask questions at the end of the lecture, giving a resounding end to what may have been the first class of college for many of them. We’ve transcribed some of these landmark questions along with Professor Jorgensen’s answers below– you may remember asking similar ones in your first Core lecture, or perhaps this new crop of young minds has something new to offer:
Q: Do you think Gilgamesh is an example of the monomyth?
A: Yes! Of course, probably the oldest one – but different from the others in that the hero fails, rather than succeeds.Q: What do you mean by how the walls seem to rise out of the landscape like consciousness out of unconsciousness?
A: The walls help humans define themselves, reflect them back on themselves, and make possible thinking and business and reading and writing and so on, just as consciousness does.Q: You mention that Gilgamesh’s second journey is a journey inward as well as outward… what do you think that is?
A: First read it and discuss it in your sections, and then email me and we’ll talk more about it!Q: In what tone does Gilgamesh says those final words about the city?
A: First read it and discuss it in your sections, and then email me and we’ll talk more about it!Q: Why do you think they treat the flood as such a negative thing? Why couldn’t it be purification and starting over again?
A: Well it IS negative — it nearly wiped out the gods themselves! — and B) they feel that life is a very uncertain thing, and unexpected events can happen that cancel everything; the flood is their way of dealing with that.Q: Why was Humbaba without his seven auras? And what are they?
A: First read it and discuss it in your sections, and then email me and we’ll talk more about it!
As wonderful as it is to see students so engaged with a subject, this lecture was so packed with knowledge that the excited students did not have time to listen to a reading of Gilgamesh in its original language. So as a special epilogue to our first class of the semester, you can listen tothe recording right here, and keep the enlightenment flowing!
