Modern Tragedy

Tragedy is a compact form that poses monumental questions. As a dramatic genre, it purports to help us make sense of mourning, justice, sacrifice, acts of bearing witness, citizenship, tyranny, suffering, and grief. Following its emergence in ancient Athens, tragic drama – and, more diffusely, the idea of the “tragic” – has shaped European theater stages for millennia, while also giving rise to a potent philosophical tradition. This seminar picks up with conversations on tragedy around the year 1800, focusing especially on European and American drama of the long twentieth century. In modernity, as we will find, the role of tragedy was fiercely contested: some dramatists and theorists claimed that tragedy could not (or should not) be “modern,” while others assigned it pride of place in the emergent cultures and politics of modernity. Together we will explore these tensions in the works of such playwrights as Goethe, Ibsen, Treadwell, Brecht, Soyinka, and Churchill, as we consider whether tragedy is best understood as form, function, or feeling. In tracing the stories of this genre through many of its canonical modern formations, we will crystallize an understanding of modern tragedy’s affordances, aims, audiences, and effects. Students will engage closely with theories of tragedy in an initial short paper; in addition to this assignment, they will have the option of writing two shorter essays or one longer seminar paper. Students at all levels are welcome to apply. Prior experience reading drama critically is welcome but is not required.