Tragic Art and the Human Experience

Why is suffering central to so much entertainment? This is a question that great artists, writers, and filmmakers have inspired their audiences to ask throughout history.

In this course, we undertake a unique survey of tragic art spanning the ancient and contemporary worlds to explore the work of classic tragedians like Euripides and Henrik Ibsen, as well as their more recent counterparts in Claire Keegan, Lars von Trier, and Francis Ford Coppola.

We begin from the (in)famous guidelines for tragedy demanded by Aristotle, and then move to challenge and expand them as we engage with drama, novels, and film—and their receptions—throughout the semester.

During the course we consider the unique use of tragedy in service of diverse political, religious, and aesthetic agendas, while simultaneously grappling with a deceptively simple question: why can't humans bear to be happy?