Tragic Heracles

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

For students of advanced Greek only, this course examines the three ancient tragedies with Heracles, the greatest of all Greek heroes, as a major character: Sophocles’ Trachiniae (Women of Trachis), Euripides’ Alcestis and Heracles Mainomenos (Heracles in Madness). Students read Trachiniae and Alcestis in the original and study Heracles Mainomenos in English. Each of these tragedies dramatizes the hero’s confrontation with death, but from very different perspectives, and it is through these differences that we examine how Sophocles and Euripides dramatize questions of life and death. These plays offer students an opportunity, while improving their ability to read ancient poetic Greek, to learn how to interpret tragedy in its cultural setting, the fifth-century Athenian polis. We study fundamental technical aspects of the ancient Greek tragic genre, including its highly refined poetic language and its stichic meters as well as the stylized structure of an ancient tragedy with its lyric choruses. By reading significant works of modern scholarship relevant to all three plays, students gain an understanding of the most important interpretive issues surrounding each play.