SoSe 15: Politics in Drama from Antiquity to Early Modernity
Tatiana Korneeva/Fabio Pagani
Kommentar
What is the intrinsic connection between political power and tragedy? By going through a series of famous tragic texts ranging from classical Antiquity to eighteenth century we shall investigate in which sense political power constitute an essential feature for the construction of tragic plots. More precisely, we shall become familiar with both the practice and theory of ancient tragedy in order to assess its impact on later tragic texts and better understand to which extent early modernity challenged ancient models and subverted the tradition.
The first part of the course will be focused on practice and theory of tragedy in Antiquity. As for practice, we shall become familiar with some tragic texts by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides as well as the Latin poet Seneca. From the point of view of theory, special attention will be devoted to Aristotle's Poetics. In the second part of the seminar, we will discuss both the interpretations given to Aristotle's text during early seventeenth century in Italy and France and underlying tension between theory and theatrical practice. We will analyse significant examples taken from different national traditions, namely, Old Regime France, Settecento Italy and eighteenth-century Germany. In this part of the course we shall be open to the discussion of the role played by the analysed text in the political theory of the last two centuries.
This course is open to students of Comparative Literature as well as of Classical Philology interested in the reception of Greco-Roman antiquity.
The course will be taught in English. Reading materials will be provided via the website Blackboard at the beginning of the course.
Schließen14 Termine
Regelmäßige Termine der Lehrveranstaltung