BA Ancient History / Course details

The dramas of 5th Century Athens can be deceptively familiar, known to us as the basis of western theatre and often studied as A-Level texts. This module will show that tragedy is a far more problematic and complicated genre than we might realize. It challenges us to consider what it is to be human, and how we understand the nature of reality. Passages of great lyric beauty and philosophical reflection are combined with an unflinching portrayal of the darkest aspects of life and death. The dramas can appear both as strikingly modern and yet terrifyingly alien. Plays by each of the three great tragedians (Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides) are studied, and we will consider contemporary views as seen in the works of Aristotle and Aristophanes. Students will also be introduced to, and will be expected to reflect critically upon, a wide range of modern methodological approaches to tragedy, including some or all of the following: Structuralism and Deconstruction, Psychoanalytic approaches, Modernism and Postmodernism, Feminist Literary Criticism and Gender Theory, Narratology, Distributed Cognition, Performance Theory, Emotions, and New Materialisms.

Pre-requisites: None

Co-requisites: None

Anti-requisties: CAHE 21011.

To provide students with a detailed and wide-ranging understanding of ancient theatre as a manifestation of 5^th Century Athenian culture.

To provide students with a detailed and wide-ranging understanding of ancient theatre as a  foundation for western drama and a part of the modern theatrical scene.

A good understanding of the contexts of ancient drama.

A good understanding of the issues involved in the study of ancient drama.

A good understanding of the different theoretical frames which can be applied to ancient drama.

Analysing complex literary texts with a range of techniques.

Use of appropriate terminology.

Evaluating different critical perspectives as part of the modern scholarly debates.

Those taking the linguistic option will in addition be able to translate dramatic texts from Greek into idiomatic English.

Ability to access relevant primary and secondary material.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

• construct an argument in written and oral form;
• assimilate and summarise large quantities of evidence;
• present the results in a professional manner with appropriate reference to sources and modern published scholarship;
• use e-resources and gain knowledge of research methods and resources;

• manage time and resources

Plays will be chosen from the set text, which all students must buy:

Greek Plays: Sixteen Plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, M. Lefkowitz & J. Romm, Ballantine Books (2^nd ed. 2017), ISBN: 978-0812983098.

Secondary reading:

• CSAPO, E., & SLATER, W., The Context of Ancient Drama (Michigan 1994) 
• DUNN, F., Tragedy’s End (New York 1996) 
• DOBROV, G., Figures of Play: Greek Drama and Metafictional Poetics (Oxford 2001) 
• EASTERLING, P., The Cambridge Companion To Greek Tragedy (Cambridge 1997) 
• GOLDHILL, S. & OSBORNE, R. (edd.), Performance Culture and Athenian Democracy ( Cambridge 1999)
• GRIFFITHS, E. M., Euripides: Heracles (London, 2006) 
• GRIFFITHS, E. M., Euripidean letters and Thucydides’ Athens, Politics of Orality (C. Cooper ed., Leiden, 2007) 
• MOST, G., ‘