About Randy
This site contains my writings for the Epics of India online course. I work as a technology consultant for a software company in Dallas, Texas. I enjoy reading fantasy and mythology, watching movies, and playing cards and board games. (Learn more at my personal web site, randyhoyt.com.)
I have always been an avid reader, but only in the last couple of years have I understood how great an effect mythology and fantasy stories have on me. In the words of C.S. Lewis, stories “delight and nourish” my soul (read more). My childhood favorites include Redwall and Lewis' Narnia chronicles. My favorites as an adult may be more sophisticated but they no doubt fall in the same genre: The Iliad, J.R.R. Tolkien's Silmarillion and Lord of the Rings, C.S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces and Perelandra trilogy, and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy.
I first discovered the epics of ancient India reading the Mahabharata in an epic poetry class taught by Laura Gibbs back in the Fall 1999 semester. (The course was titled Greek epic poetry, but the epics of India have meant so much to her that she couldn't possibly leave them out.) The story was so powerful and moving — it had everything I could ever want in a story. Laura told me that she planned to develop a course devoted to the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, and I couldn't wait to study these epics in depth. She taught the first section of the course in the Fall 2004 semester, and I performed the work for the course during spring and fall 2005.