ENG131

"Why does tragedy exist?" asks Anne Carson. The answer: "Because you are full of rage. And why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief." This course explores how dramatic tragedy expresses such rage and such grief through the medium of the embodied, dramatic voice. By probing the voice's place in tragedy, emotion, and politics, students seek to better understand tragedy as a genre. Students read two classical tragedies and two Shakespearean tragedies, each alongside an adaptation by modern artists who rethink how tragedy works and whom it serves.