CLAS 095  TAP: Greek Tragedy             
     

Fact-Finding Missions (do NOT do a bit of each: do ONE of these well: doing it well means finding not just one fact or two, but rather finding a nexus of connected facts)

• What other festivals with dramatic performances were there?
• Why do the numbers for the number of total plays written by each playwright differ so much? What ancient evidence are the numbers based on?
• What ancient evidence lies behind the birth and death dates of the three tragedians? Why are some dates given as two years (e.g. 424/425) in good sources?
• What is the Oedipus complex? In addition to standard encyclopedia-style information, find some quotation(s) from Freud himself about it and some interesting analysis of it and its importance
• Greek religion: find out about the oracle at Delphi, the oracle at Dodona, and the Eleusinian mysteries.
  
• Greek Mythology: find out about the authors and describe the works of Apollodorus, Hyginus, Ovid, Hesiod.
  

• Greek vase-painting: describe the styles, give the dates they were prevalent, and find images.
  
• Greek Comedy: find facts about it. Origins, venue, structure of plays, historic periods, authors, individual plays, etc.
• The geography of Athens: what are the major sites of ancient Athens that can be visited today?

• Find modern versions of ancient tragedies (include date, author, etc.: finding 3 that are NOT listed here counts as one fact-finding mission: anything starting with the Renaissance is counted as "Modern": stage productions of ancient plays do not count, but film ones do):
  
• Films
• The Trojan Women (1971 with Katherine Hepburn and Vanessa Redgrave: Michael Cacoyannis  directed and wrote screenplay)
• Iphigenia (1977 with Irene Papa; in Greek; Michael Cacoyannis directed and wrote screenplay)
• The Illic Passion (based on Prometheus Bound; 1967 with Richard Beauvais;Gregory  Markopolous directed)
• A Dream of Passion (Jules Dassin 1978: based on Medea)
  
• TV
• Medea (2005 mini-series in the Netherlands: Theodore Holman wrote; Theo Van Gogh directed)
  
• Plays:
• Anouilh's Antigone (Nov. 6th, 1944 in Paris)
• O'Neill's Mourning become Electra and Desire Under the Elms (1924, modern Hippolytus)
• Greek  by Steven Berkoff, 2001
  

• What is know historically about the Areopagus, Athenian courts, the Areopagite council?
• Look up the myths of the house of Atreus in Gantz' Early Greek Myth and report what is there in detail and in your own words.