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Assignments and ReadingsRequirementsThree Exams 45%Theatre Arts 1Great Literature of the StageDr. John BlondellPlace and TimePhone – 565-6778. E-mail: [email protected] Hours TBAOverview of CourseThis course studies some of the masterpieces of the Western dramatic tradition, covering a nearly 2,500-year period from the ancient Greeks to today. Etymologically, the term “drama” derives from the Greek term “dran,” which means, “to do.” Today, we understand Drama to be the literary component of a multi-disciplinary art form that fuses literature, the plastic arts, and the art of acting in the time-based art we know as “theatre.”The term “theatre” also has an interesting etymology. It derives from the term “theatron,”which is where ancient Greeks sat to watch plays, and is translated as “seeing place.” The derivations of drama and theatre, then, illuminate many important characteristics of both terms, and bear witness to the fundamental relationship between them. Drama is a particular kind of literature, one created for the stage, where humans enact significant (or sometimes frivolous) stories for the enjoyment of other people. Dramatic literature is meant to be seen, to be incarnated in people speaking and behaving in three-dimensional space, through the sweep of time. This intentional corporeality suggests the fundamental wholeness of the theatrical enterprise and the literature that comprises it. The appeal of drama is to the whole person, to aspects and concerns that run the gamut of human experience, be they spiritual, emotional, psychological, social, physical, and so forth. One way to think about the fundamental corporeality of drama is to draw on the German critic Wolfgang Izer. If fiction, as he describes it, is literature that “lures the imaginary into being,” then I would suggest that drama is literature that “lures being into the imaginary.” Dramatic literature is indeed fictional in that the stories and characters expressed on stage are products of the human imagination, yet things on stage never fullygive up their own self-identities as things in this world. Their being, their fundamental, concrete “realness” doesn’t change. Rather, for the purposes of the fictions being spun out before us, we keep this “knowledge of the real” at abeyance, in a kind of willful forgetting that the great 19th century critic Samuel Taylor Coleridge calls “the willing suspension of disbelief.” The concerns of this course are threefold. We will explore drama as a kind of artistic representation that emerges from the tendencies and concerns of certain times and places. Second, we will explore drama as a carrier of meanings that have impact on many aspects of our humanity. We will study how plays engage the world around us, provide great pleasure, and offer ways of understanding ourselves, others, and ultimatelyGod. Third, we will explore the important conventions of dramatic representation in an effort to understand how things mean in the theatre. The course is intended as an introduction to the literature of the stage, and is meant to ignite a life-long love affair withdrama and the correlative arts with which it nests. The heritage of Western Drama is rich and vast, and includes great dramatic traditions from numerous countries and cultures. We will focus on three: the Classical tradition of the ancient Greeks, Shakespeare, and the French playwright Moliere; the Modern tradition of Henrik Ibsen, Anton Chekhov, August Strindberg, and George Bernard Shawl; and the American tradition of Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, and August Wilson. The plays selected present a great range of style and form, of subject and theme, of structure and genre. Our study will be cultural, in that we will explore the plays as expressions and products of cultural tendencies and concerns, and aesthetic in that we will explore the formal components that make up the individual plays. By semester’s end it will be difficult to separate the purely cultural from purely aesthetic. Rather, we will see the complete interdependence on one and another, and bearwitness to the intricate relationship that exists between a culture and the artistic forms that emerge from it. Ultimately, our study is intended to explore how these plays can help deepen our faith, and make us more discerning and sensitive Christian people. Here are some specific goals for the course:1) To become conversant with some of the major masterpieces of WesternDrama, identify the forces that contributed to their shaping, and understand their dominant thematic concerns and patterns of meaning.2) To identify the appropriate dramatic conventions dominant in a particular period and culture, and show their relationship to the formal components of dramatic literature in an effort to display how plays manifest their meanings to people. 3) To learn and use the appropriate vocabulary for the communication of ideas and concepts relative to the literature of the stage.4) To develop deeper awareness of God, yourself, and others through the literature of the stage. Assignments and ReadingsThe Classical TraditionM September 1 Introduction to the Course: On MimesisW September 3 The Poetics, AristotleF September 5 The Poetics, continuedM September 8 Introduction to Greek TragedyW September 10 Oedipus Rex, SophoclesF September 12 Oedipus Rex, SophoclesM September 15 Introduction to Greek ComedyW September 17 The Birds, AristophanesF September 19 The Birds, AristophanesM September 22 Introduction to Shakespearean TragedyW September 24 Hamlet, William ShakespeareF September 26 Hamlet, William ShakespeareM September 29 Hamlet, William ShakespeareW October 1 Introduction to Shakespearean RomanceF October 3 The Tempest, William ShakespeareM October 6 The Tempest, William ShakespeareW October 8 Introduction to Shakespearean RomanceF October 10 A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William ShakespeareM October 13 No Class: Fall HolidayW October 15 A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William ShakespeareF October 17 The Neoclassicism and the DramaM October 20 The Misanthrope, MoliereW October 22 The Misanthrope, MoliereF October 24 ExamM October 27 Introduction to Modern DramaW October 29 Ghosts, Henrik IbsenF October 31 Ghosts, Henrik IbsenM November 3 The Seagull, Anton ChekhovW November 5 The Seagull, Anton ChekhovF November 7 Miss Julie, August StrindbergM November 10 Miss Julie,


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Westmont TA 001 - Syllabus

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