Online Literature · Classics · Epic Poetry
Immersive online courses in Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Milton — guided by an instructor who believes these poems can change your life.
Homer
Dante
Virgil
Milton
The four great epic poems of Western literature — the Iliad, the Aeneid, the Divine Comedy, and Paradise Lost — are not relics. They are living works that speak directly to how we love, grieve, choose, and seek meaning.
Each quarter, one course. Each course, one poem. Small groups, weekly live sessions, pre-recorded lectures, and an instructor who has spent years learning how to make these texts come alive for modern readers.
Rage, glory, grief, and the costs of war. The oldest epic in the Western tradition is also among its most psychologically rich. We read it not as ancient history but as a mirror.
A journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven that is really a journey through the full range of human experience. Dante's masterwork — fully built and offered.
Rome's founding epic and one of the greatest meditations on duty, fate, and the price of empire. A poem that never stops asking hard questions.
The most ambitious poem in the English language — Satan, free will, the Fall, and what it means to be human. Milton closes out the year in the grandest possible way.
Achilles tending Patroclus · Attic red-figure kylix · c. 500 BCE · Altes Museum, Berlin
The Iliad is not primarily a poem about war. It is a poem about what war costs — in lives, in grief, in the choices that cannot be unmade. Homer's great insight is that his heroes know this, and choose glory anyway. We will sit with that choice for three months.
Each week: a pre-recorded lecture to prepare you for the reading, a live one-hour session to discuss it together, and the kind of close attention to the text that most readers never get. All sessions are recorded. Asynchronous enrollment is available.
Each pre-recorded lecture has two parts. Before you read, you listen to the introduction — essential context, background, and what to look for. After you read, you return for the integrations section, which draws on outside research and connects the Book to broader themes.
Recommended order: Introduction → Read the Book → Integrations. This sequence transforms the reading experience.
Each Book gets the same three-part structure during class:
After class, students have open access to the instructor for questions.
Pre-Class Viewing:
During Class: Introduction to the epic poetry tradition, Homer's biography and historical context, the Trojan War cycle, key philosophical concepts in the Iliad, and course logistics.
Each class covers two Books of the Iliad (Books 1–24 across 12 sessions). Pre-class work includes the pre-recorded lecture and reading assignment. During class: student summaries, instructor's thematic focus, and group line discussion.
"Sing, goddess, the anger of Achilles — and the grief it brought upon the Greeks."
Homer · Iliad · Book I · Opening Line
Each course is $250. To reserve your place in the current Iliad course — or to be notified when the next course opens — reach out directly. All enrollment is handled personally by Nick.
To enroll or ask questions, email Unshelledcoast@gmail.com
or reach out via the payment method of your choice once enrolled.
Your Instructor
I teach literature for the same reason Homer sang — because these stories matter, and because most of us were never given the tools to really enter them.
My courses are built around a simple conviction: the great epic poems are not difficult because they are obscure, but because they are deep. Given the right context, the right questions, and the right companions for the journey, anyone can read them — and be changed by them.
The Divine Comedy course is fully built and available. The Iliad course launches Q2 2026. The Aeneid and Paradise Lost follow through the year.
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