Teatro griego antiguo: obras de Sófocles “Edipo”, “Antígona” y “Electra”

(A) Required Experience: 

This is a 9-week course addressed to students who have (at least) a basic background on ancient civilizations, and a special interest in the Ancient Greek literary production, or in the ancient Greek artistic and cultural production in general. 
N.B.: The students do not need to have taken the other classes on ancient Greek theatrical plays, but it would be an asset to have done so.

(B) Teaching style and students interaction:

The learning process of this class is based mostly on students' class participation, class dialogue, questions based on the ongoing discussion, and new ideas based on the participants. There is not one universal solution to teach. Rather I combine techniques to achieve the maximum of my strengths and of my students. Having taught so far young kids, teenagers, University students and mature learners, I know that teachers need to approach students with understanding. After all, such a small class has the advantage of making the combined technique of dialogue-discussion-lecture feasible and efficient. 

(C) Class structure: 

Weeks 1 to 3: Discussion and Interpretation of Sophocles' play "Oedipus", which students are asked to read and prepare in advance. It is, without doubt, the most famous tragic play of all in the history of theatre. The story is not just about the notorious hero Oedipus, so well-known from his confrontation with monstruous Sphinx in Greek mythology, but also an exercise in arrogance: Oedipus is convinced that his intellect can surmount any obstacle of his, as he had done before, solving the riddle of the Sphinx. But his intellect is far too little to confront divine preordinace. But what about the idea of autonomous individual will which we so much cherish today?

Weeks 4 to 6: Discussion and Interpretation of Sophocles' play "Antigone", which students are asked to read and prepare in advance. "Antigone" is, out of all Sophocles' tragedies, the most overly political one, with the heroine living in Thebes during political strife, tyranny and domestic chaos. It have, thus, inspired numerous modern anachronistic adaptations, with Antigone fighting sometimes Nazism, sometimes communism, or South African apartheid or British imperialism in Ireland. In the original play, Antigone resists her uncle's (and new king of Thebes's) despotic and erratic behavior, especially when he goes against, the divine, unwritten law. 

Weeks 7 to 9: Discussion and Interpretation of Sophocles' play "Electra", which students are asked to read and prepare in advance. "Electra" is the only surviving Sophoclean tragedy set at Mycenae, whereas her myth has also been portrayed by the other two great Athenian tragedians, Aeschylus and Euripides. Sophocles, though, instead of focusing on whether Orestes was justified or not to committ his crime, and the results of it (like in Aeschylus and Euripides), he chooses to focus on the the remarkable figure of Electra and her psychological disturbances, making her the most dominant of all of his characters ever on stage.