About the lecture

In this module, we think about the origins of Greek tragedy in Classical Athens, focusing in particular on the size and location of the Theatre of Dionysus in Athens, the festival of the Dionysia at which most tragedies were performed, the distinction between the actors and the chorus, ideas relating to the movement of the chorus, and the importance of the mask in the performance of Greek tragedy.

Reading list:
– Jacques Lecoq, The Moving Body (trans. Bradby, 2000)

About the lecturer

Born in Bristol, and educated at Oxford and St Louis, Dr John Lennard has taught English, American, and Commonwealth Literature in Cambridge, London, and Jamaica over more than twenty years. He has written two widely used textbooks (on poetry and drama) and monographs on Shakespeare, Paul Scott, Nabokov, and Faulkner, as well as two collections of essays on contemporary genre writers in crime, science fiction and fantasy, and romance. Enthusiastic, discursive, widely knowledgeable, and a demon for punctuation (on which he has also published extensively), he has been a popular Summer School Course Leader and lecturer for the Institute of Continuing Education since 1992.