First-Year Interdisciplinary Sem:Ancient & Renaissance Fest: Its Literary, Dramatic & Social…

Catalog description

This class investigates the role of festive custom and holiday release, ritual festivity as well as public political expression, and the kinds of performance and literary form that they enable or frustrate in ancient Greece and Rome and in Renaissance Europe, with a 20th century postlude. Why does festivity sometimes lead to political revolt and at other times does not? "We will look at some theories of festivity and carnival, at the festive worship of the gods including especially Dionysus, the Greek god of theater and wine (among other things), at the role of music, at representations in Renaissance paintings, and at the way classical ritual practices shape Renaissance and even modern ideas of festivity and irony. We also explore the effect of the Protestant suppression of festive holiday and theatricality in Shakespeare"s England, and at the tensions inherent in festivity between excess and moderation, between the saturnalia and the philosophical symposium. Readings from Plato, Euripides, Ovid, Shakespeare, Paule Marshall; paintings by Botticelli, Velazquez, Titian, Caravaggio, Poussin and Brueghel, and the film Black Orpheus (Orfeu Negro, directed by Marcel Camus). We will include New Orleans carnival and Jazz Funerals, and may end with a consideration of Woodstock in 1969 and the intersection of protest, rebellion and festive celebration in modern times.