Battle of the Sexes: Love, Desire, and War on the Stage and Beyond Beyond

Catalog description

The theme of love is possibly one of the oldest in world literature. This course examines the ways this theme has been manifested on the stage and in poetry, spanning the period from antiquity to today. From the classics onwards what we may today consider as primarily a private expression and activity transpires as deeply embedded in broader historical and political narratives. For example, we examine the constitutive relationships between private desire and public politics. The family unit and all its multiple manifestations acts as a microcosm that mirrors but also challenges dominant power structures. The relationships between the genders, between siblings, and between parents and children all provide a fertile ground that helps to shape our personal subjectivity, but also our civic identity. The seminar looks at the ways great plays and poems have approached the theme of love in both its private and public dimensions, and also examines the formal and aesthetic experiments that resulted from this engagement. Authors covered will include: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Shakespeare, Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg, Oscar Wilde, W. B. Yeats, Gertrude Stein, Lillian Hellman, Caryl Churchill, and Tony Kushner.