Reading Plays: Major Dramatists

3 units

This course will explore the development of drama from the ancient Greeks to the present, covering key masterworks with the aim of promoting understanding and analysis of dramatic texts as a form. As a course abut drama, this encompasses great things: life and death, war and peace, religion, identity, connections, loss, beauty - even meaning itself. We'll bring our own experiences with these and more to bear on these plays, but we're also going to read them in their own terms. We will emphasize close analysis and interpretation of the plays we read as literary texts, exploring how plot, character, language, symbols, and themes are manipulated by dramatists in a range of ways. Historical and performative contexts will be addressed, as will the basic cornerstone approaches of critical theory. Throughout the course, we will reflect on why these plays are culturally important and worthy of study, while never losing sight of the visceral excitement these works of art can engender.