FYSP 187 - Playing at Gods: Myth, Ritual, Theater, Story

FC ARHU WINT

4 credits
What does it mean to act out the stories of the gods–your own gods, or other cultures’ gods? In the last 25 years there has been another revival of theater, fiction, and poetry involving mythology, mostly Greek and Roman. We’ll study theories about Greek tragedy from Aristotle and Nietzsche. After we read plays by Euripides and selections from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, we will study plays and novels based on them, such as Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses, Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red, and Anais Mitchell’s Hadestown. We’ll also read works that depend on Aztec mythology; and end with the figure of Antigone from WWII France to the contemporary U.S.-Mexican border. Besides examining mythological figures as characters, we’ll also meditate on theater’s strange position between sacred ritual and secular storytelling, and how it can call into question the nature of identity.