MADNESS IN GREEK TRAGEDY: A STUDY OF THREE PLAYS
Associate Professor Clive Chandler, School of Languages and Literatures, University of Cape Town
Monday 16–Wednesday 18 January
5.00 pm
COURSE FEES R330
Madness is a prominent inclusion in several key Greek tragedies. In this course three ancient plays (Sophocles’ Ajax and the Heracles and Bacchae of Euripides) have been selected for study of the way madness is essential to the plot and used as an indicator of divine power. We shall explore how these plays are uncompromising, even brutal, in their depiction of human vulnerability yet at the same time represent ways in which humans respond to this fact. An effort will be made to answer why madness makes good tragedy.
Lecture titles
1. ‘Anything can happen’: losing and taking back control in Sophocles’ Ajax
2. A reluctant madman: the case of Euripides’ Heracles
3. Madness and terror: the manifestation of a new god in Euripides’ Bacchae
Recommended reading
Dutta, S. 2001. Sophocles: Ajax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Vellacott, P. 1954. Euripides: The Bacchae and Other Plays. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Waterfield, R. 2003. Euripides: Heracles and Other Plays. Oxford: Oxford University Press.