The course deals with the characteristics of tragedy, both as dramatic text and as text for the stage, in different periods in the history of Western drama. The first half of the course will be devoted to premodern drama: Greek tragedy and its Roman 'adaptations'; Shakespearean tragedy in the Elizabethan theatre; and the French and German tragedies of the eighteenth-century. The second half of the course will be devoted to modern drama, from Georg Büchner, through Henrik Ibsen and Federico García Lorca, to Jean Anouilh.

The texts we will discuss are:

1. Sophocles' Antigone.

2. Euripides' Medea and Seneca's Medea.

3. Shakespeare's King Lear.

4. Georg Büchner's Woyzeck.

5. Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House.

6. Federico García Lorca's Yerma.

7. Jean Anouilh's Antigone.