LS 730 - Tragedy, Comedy, and the Human Condition

(3.00 cr.)

Too often people tend to think about tragedy and comedy primarily in terms of dramatic structure: do things end poorly or well, in death and destitution or in communion and procreative hope. Instead, what if people thought about tragedy and comedy as modes rather than genres, as tragic and comic ways of seeing and understanding themselves in the world rather than handy descriptors of plot? Nowadays, when comedy and tragedy too often serve as degraded semantic markers (everything's "tragic," everyone's a "comedian") or flatten out into melodrama and farce, is there still value in a genuinely tragic or comic vision of the human condition? Students examine these questions.