The myths of ancient Greece and Rome, preserved through poetry, drama, and other literary arts, have had an outsized influence on Western literature from the Middle Ages until today. Once the exclusive property of well-educated white men literate in ancient Greek and Latin, classical works have since been made substantially more accessible and democratized through widely published translations. In this class we will explore how and why these narratives from millenia past have served as powerful inspiration for countless works of literature. How, for example, did Homer’s tales of the Trojan War help writers find a way in to speaking about the atrocities of World War I? How has Ovid’s Metamorphoses worked as a useful springboard for women and other gender minorities to approach the awful subject of sexual trauma? We will look at the various ways that writers have revised the original myths to give voice to previously voiceless figures, and in doing so, have staked a claim for further representation (in terms of race, gender, class, sexual orientation, nationality) in these foundational texts. We will begin with a brief review of some foundational works from the Hellenistic period. From there we will jump to the Modernist period and look at a multi-genre selection of anglophone texts from the past 100 years.