Tragedy

3 units

Much of our attention in this course will focus on the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides and on determining what is unique to each playwright and what is common to the ancient Greek sensibility -- especially in terms of morality. We will then look at selected tragedies of the twentieth century (those of O'Neill, Dove, and others), plays whose strategy has been to revisit particular Greek tragedies and recast them in the contemporary period. What aspects of Greek morality remain constant over time and across differences of culture? In what ways and to what degree are the parameters for morality always -- necessarily -- in shift? These are among the questions we will attempt to answer in the course of our investigations into tragedy from its beginnings up to the present day.