- History, Literature, and Theory of the Theatre: Premodern Mediterranean World

Catalog description

This course explores the relationship among theatrical storytelling traditions and the cultures and audiences that produced them from ancient Africa, Turkey, and Greece to medieval Europe and the Middle East. Major topics of investigation will include evidence of prehistoric theatre forms, ancient Egyptian and pre-Hellenistic theatre and drama in the Mediterranean world, classical and late Hellenistic drama and performance, republican and imperial Roman drama and theatre, the religious and secular theatre of medieval Christian Europe, and the early theatre forms of the Islamic world. Course readings combine primary sources, secondary analyses, and drama and theory texts.