 2015 - 2016 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 0680-5154-01 | The Crying Game: Psychoanalysis in Literature, Art, Philosop | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| FACULTY OF HUMANITIES | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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University credit hours: 4.0
Course description
This seminar focuses on the structural, thematic, and performative principles of the melo-drama, the crying game, but we will start with reading three tragedies (Euripides and Shakespeare) in order to understand the move from tragedy to melodrama. J. V. Cunnigham argues that Shakespeare’s tragedy is defined by the type of action it presents and that its effect is woe and wonder and that this correlates with Aristotle’s analysis. The seminar will also undertake a classic definition of melodrama. It derives from the Victorian theater, emigrates to the screen during the silent era, and remains with us in the Hollywood talkies and later in crime films, romantic dramas and contemporary political thrillers and super-hero blockbusters. We will study the emotional burden that both the characters and the viewers suffer in tragedy. Then we will examine Foucault’s History of Madness and Rita Dove’s play as melodramatic texts. We will continue reading stories—Balzac—and articles central to melodrama—Brooks and Elsasser. We will then study filmic melodramas of directors such as Cukor, Jewison, Sirk, Fassbinder, Heins, Pabst, Herzog, and we will watch excerpts of South Korean melodramas of the 60s. We will psychoanalytical works of Freud, Fried, Lacan, Klein, and Bion. We will also reed expert studies of melodrama such as works by Ariella Freedman and Jonathan Goldberg.