Credit Points 10

Legacy Code 100900

Coordinator Helen Basides Opens in new window

Description This subject will examine the theory, writing and performance of Western Tragedy and comedy. The generic terms "tragedy" and "comedy" will provide signposts for both historical and theoretically modern approaches to a range of plays. Texts selected from the period since 1950 may represent comedy and/or tragedy in popular culture, and may have been written for media other than the stage, such as television and film.

School Humanities & Comm Arts

Discipline Literature

Student Contribution Band HECS Band 1 10cp

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Level Undergraduate Level 2 subject

Equivalent Subjects LGYB 4589 - Comedy and Tragedy

Restrictions

Successful completion of 40 credit points of study in currently enrolled program.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this subject, students should be able to:

1. Demonstrate an understanding of the plays under analysis in an intellectual context established in lectures, seminars and through wider secondary reading.
2. Identify generic conventions of tragedy and of comedy that are employed or subverted in the texts set for study.
3. Explain the relationship of the plays (and other texts set for study) to contemporary and modern genre theory.
4. Conceptualise and generalise historically concerning tragedy and comedy in the periods examined.
5. Produce an individual, carefully considered written and oral discussions on issues relating to the generic/historical study of the set texts.

Subject Content

Debates about the nature, origins, and cultural locus of the genres of comedy and tragedy (Aristotle, Hobbes, Freud, Steiner, Frye, Barber, Bakhtin, Eagleton)
Debates about the "continuity" and/or demise of traditions of comedy and tragedy
Comedy and tragedy in the classical period (5th Century BCE-1st Century AD)
Shakespearean comedy and tragedy in Elizabethan England (Bradley, Frye, Barber, Reiss, Greenblatt, Bloom)
Debates about the "death" of tragedy (Steiner) and the rise of "liberal" tragedy (Williams) in the 19th century
Modern tragedy (Eagleton)
Contemporary television comedy.
Case studies: selected comedies and tragedies from the classical, Shakespearean and "modern" periods.