CLGR 404
Tragedy Spring 2021
Division I

Tragedy was a hybrid genre invented in sixth-fifth century Athens, where tragic performances in the city’s festival of the Greater Dionysia played a vital role in the democratic polis. This course will focus on reading in Greek a complete tragedy of Sophokles or Euripides; we will also read in translation several other tragedies, a satyr-play, and a comedy of Aristophanes. While focusing on questions of particular importance for the play we are reading in Greek, we will also situate that play in a larger context by exploring, for instance: aspects of the social and political situations in and for which fifth-century tragedies were first produced; the several performance genres out of which tragedy was created; developments in the physical characteristics of the theater and in elements of staging and performance; problems of representation particularly relevant to theatrical production and performance.