BASC70220 - The Art and Ends of Reading: Tragedy

Course Description

Tragedy, as a literary genre, has consistently been regarded as the highest form of artistic expression in the West, while the idea of “the tragic,” on certain influential accounts, refers us to the deepest (“most primal”) dimension of our human existence. We will explore both conceptions here—“tragedy” and “the tragic”—first through various classic theoretical treatments (Aristotle, Nietzsche, Hume, Hegel, Emerson, Jaspers, Simmel, and Lukacs), then through a number of exemplary dramatic works (Sophocles, Euripides, Shakespeare, Beckett) and one unusual literary experiment in trying to “turn catastrophe into tragedy,” Norman Maclean’s Young Men and Fire. Be forewarned: there is some dense, difficult, and demanding stuff here; but also, perhaps, something approaching the primal, tragic sublime.

"The tragic vision is in its first phase primal, or primitive, in that it calls up out of the depths the first (and last) of all questions, the question of existence: What does it mean to be? It recalls the original terror, harking back to a world that antedates the conceptions of philosophy, the consolations of later religions, and whatever constructions the human has devised to persuade itself that its universe is secure. It recalls the original un-reason, the terror of the irrational. It sees man as questioner, naked, unaccommodated, alone, facing mysterious, demonic forces in his own nature and outside, and the irreducible facts of suffering and death." (Sewall, Richard B., The Vision of Tragedy, pp. 4-5)

Course Outline

Notes

Online registration deadline: Dec. 22, 5 PM CT

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