Comedy, Tragedy, Inverted World: Masterpieces of German Drama

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Germany, Austria, and Switzerland have one of the world’s richest traditions of drama as well as arguably the greatest theorists of drama. We will discuss selected masterpieces of German drama (and film), paying particular attention to the ways in which each of our works breaks expectations and advances what we might call an inverted world. The course will explore historical developments, but our primary focus will be close analysis of the works, including their ambiguities and their wrestling with tragic and comic modes of understanding the world, including interpersonal and social conflicts. Likely authors include Lessing, Schiller, Büchner, Hofmannsthal, Brecht, and Dürrenmatt. Some attention will also be given to distinctive German theories of tragedy and comedy, including the singular contributions of Hegel. The seminar will be taught entirely in German.