2020-21 Academic Catalog

We will read Euripides’ Helen in Greek, in which the tragedian creates a plot around the non-standard version of events: Helen never went to Troy, she spent the entire war in Egypt; the Greeks and Trojans were fooled by a simulacrum. The resulting play is a tragicomedy or a romantitragedy that deliberately skews literary expectations. We will read a number of Euripides’ other extant tragedies in English, as well as critical studies that examine key issues in Euripidean criticism: the genre of tragedy, Euripides' depiction of women, and the role of rhetoric in late fifth-century Athens. Prerequisite: Greek 204 or the equivalent