The paper is essentially a critical response to an issue, not a regurgitation of the official criticism of great experts’.
1. Focus on at least one particular issue, scene, or character or even a topic.
2. Avoid grand vacuities like “Woman of ancient drama” Yes, there are female characters in the plays we have been reading, so what? This is not even a workable PhD thesis. I want you to focus instead on is there a particular woman in a particular play? What makes her fascinating? How does she compare with other treatments of woman in plays? With treatments of men? What particular scene caught your attention in the first place? How does that scene work? Do you want to analyze the dynamics of the character? The difficulty in plotting, staging or performance? The way in which a common plot has been revitalized by the playwright? The way in which a scene has been translated in our texts as compared to others may point to subtleties in the original language/ (the Loeb classics with give a serviceble translation beside the original Greek or Latin for the most ambitious)
3. Above all make sure that you write about something that you would like to present (for example something you yourself would say to a new class) and not something you (inaccurately) imagine is what i want to see/
4. Can you compare a character’s treatment by different authors (classical or their later imitators)? Can you compare a character’s situation in a classical drama with a comparable situation in contemporary life? Would Oedipus have asked his pollster’s about the plague situations? Clytaemnestra never worries about her status as a woman, but Antigone and Ismene discuss the subject in some detail. Does this mean that Aeschylus had different views from Sophocles? Aristophanes occasionally mentions the war. Does a particular passage or scene say something about the war and it’s influence on Athentian society? and drama?
Feel free to choose whatever you like to write about. The choices of the plays are
Sophocles:
Antigone
Oedipus Rex
Electra
Ajax
Aeschylus:
The oresteian Trilogy
Agamemnon
Eumenides
Menander:
Dyskolos
Seneca:
Madea
Aristophanes:
Lysistrata
