This module and its co-requisite (Research Seminar A: Euripides) will allow students to engage in research into a topic relating to a member of academic staff’s research expertise. This module will test the students on their ability to compare different source materials (primary literary, visual, historical or archaeological data) relating to their topic. Working under the guidance of their module co-ordinator, students will be able to develop their own research topics into a fully-fledged research essay/report.
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 robust argument on the basis of the analysis of relevant primary sources;
Engage with major scholarly debates on a topic;
Analyse data with awareness of possible biases;
Synthesise and articulate complex ideas in an independent essay.