This course is an attempt to stall and allow a close reading of some key texts in Western drama. Underlying the course is the belief that the deeper we delve into these texts – the more fruit they will yield. We will devote several sessions to each play, in an attempt to allow as thorough, close, and rich reading of them as possible. Through the plays we will explore, among other things, the configuration of dramatic conflict in a text written for the stage; the development of images and motifs; the construction of dramatic characters; and the echoes and traces of these plays in subsequent Western culture. But first and foremost we will repeatedly ask how these plays tackle personal, social, and political conflicts – and how we read them from the historical moment which we inhabit.

As an underlying theme, we will explore how drama participated in the Western erotic imagination, with a focus on the relations between Eros, the individual, and society.