Provides a survey of literature about the hero’s trip to the underworld, and what the hero learns from the dead that he needs to take back with him to the realm of the living. The course begins with the myths of Orpheus, Hercules, Odysseus, and other heroes who make it, alive, to the underworld and back, and follows with Book VI of Virgil’s Aeneid, and then Dante’s Inferno. The second half of the course examines variations of this theme in poetry, novels, drama, and film, including the work of Rimbaud, G.B. Shaw, Sartre, Pound, Broch, Monteverdi, Henze, and Birtwistle.