Class Dramatic Reading Workshop I

Caught between the “paradoxical historicity” (Jesi) of the myth and the emerging logos, Tragedy occupies a short period in Greek cultural history. Understanding the richness of such a period and its fecundity is the first objective. Reading these tragedies will also allow a renewed perception of what constitutes the dramatic form as it has emerged in its singularity and its role in human societies. Students are invited to a wider understanding of human behaviour, both as anthropological and psychic experience revealed through the dramatic text. Students should become fairly capable of reading Greek tragedies, not as an alien literary tradition, but as a literary form capable of reaching today's emotions and doubts. Finally, they'll be able to hold tragic text relevant to their own historical and individual experience.

Not applicable

1. Ways of reading 1.1. Why read the classics? 2. Reading Greek tragedies: some prior questions 2.1. The classical Greece 2.2. The concepts of tragedy and comedy 2.3. Tragic categories: liberty and necessity; blame and fate; awareness and ignorance 2.4. The “death of tragedy” thesis and the modern attempts for its revitalization 3. Reading plays of the tragic corpus 3.1. Sophocles, Oedipus Rex 3.2. Sophocles, Antigone 3.3. Euripides, The Phoenician Women  

Collective reading of the proposed texts. Plight of the issues reaised and their submission to debate. Recourse to supplementary sources (other dramatic texts, films, records of performances). Lectures by the teacher in order to frame or summarize the activities described.

Sófocles – Rei Édipo. Trad. Maria do Céu Fialho. Lisboa: Edições 70, 2006. Sófocles – Antígona. Trad. Marta Várzeas. V.N. Famalicão: Húmus, 2010. Eurípides – Fenícias. In Tragédias. Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 2009. Crimp, Martin – O resto já conhecem do cinema. Trad. Isabel Lopes. Porto/V.N. Famalicão: TNSJ/Húmus, 2019.