This course meets the introductory course requirement for Literary Studies majors and is intended for beginner Literary Studies students. This course takes a global view of early approaches to storytelling by way of examining the literary dimensions of ancient and/or “classic” approaches to orature, as well as other (written) story-forms such as, for example, folktales, epic poems, parables, proverbs, and riddles. During our course, we will delve into oral and written works from territories encompassing Antarctica, Africa, Asia, and Europe to investigate ways that erudite, seminal, and timeless “inventions of literature” occurred across broad expanses of space and time in both Eastern and Western Hemispheres.