This module and its co-requisite (Research Seminar B: Euripides) will allow students to engage in research into a topic relating to a member of academic staff’s research expertise. Working under the guidance of the module co-ordinator, students will survey a well-defined body of primary literary, visual, historical or archaeological data. Students will work towards compiling a portfolio of work based on this material.
Euripides is the best preserved of the ancient Greek playwrights, with eighteen surviving plays (plus one more whose authorship is disputed) and substantial fragments of several others. His experiments with dramatic form, and his original, often irreverent treatment of mythic subject-matter, have sometimes got him into trouble with critics from Aristotle onwards, but he was the most popular tragedian in antiquity, and has won new popularity with readers and theatregoers in the modern world. His emotional range is extraordinary, including the extremes of pain, passion and grief as well as powerful rhetoric, intense legalistic debate, and some surprising moments of light-heartedness. In this seminar we will study a range of Euripides’ work, and explore subjects such as where Euripides finds his stories and how he adapts them; the range of characters he creates; his stagecraft, and the extent to which we can reconstruct how the plays were originally performed; their engagement with contemporary politics and intellectual trends.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the module students should be able to:
Formulate a research question;
Identify relevant data/sources on the subject;
Identify relevant secondary scholarship on the subject;
Interpret topic specific primary texts, material culture etc for the subject.
Assessment
37093-01 : 2500 Word Essay : Coursework (100%)
Assessment Methods & Exceptions
Assessment: 2,500 word essay (including scholarship survey and formulation of research aims/questions and formulation of research methodology, including explanation of source material) (100%).