The Great Philosophical Plays: “There’s no lack of void.”
COURSE DESCRIPTION:
“What are we doing here, that is the question,” declares Vladimir in Waiting for Godot. Like “the face that launched a thousand ships,” the why and wherefore of human existence launched millennia of soul-searching, metaphysical inquiries, ontological speculations, teleological studies, and ceaseless story-making. Fittingly, the great Bard conceives of the world as a stage and all us humans as actors, and so it is the stage to which we will direct our probing mind and introspective gaze. In this unit, we will study what many consider as two of the greatest masterworks of Western drama: William Shakespeare’s early modern play King Lear (1606) and Samuel Beckett’s late modernist play Waiting for Godot (1953). Doubtless, what accords them such prominence in Western literature, aside from their technical artistry, is the scope and magnitude of their philosophical engagement with both contemporary ideas and universal themes. In response to Niccolò Machiavelli’s bestselling political treatise, The Prince (1532), and Michel de Montaigne’s magnum opus, Essays (1580-1595), Shakespeare’s tragedy tackles a variety of political, metaphysical, ethical, and existential challenges that were as relevant then as they are now. Beyond its immediate historical resonances, King Lear is also highly modern in how it entangles desire, mortality, and language with human subjectivity, anticipating the psychoanalytical insights of such towering twentieth-century intellectuals as Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan. Their theories (and mapping) of the mind, controversial as they are, have exerted tremendous influence on the arts, social sciences, and humanities over the course of the tumultuous century and beyond. In addition to Freud’s and Lacan’s psychoanalytic offerings, the modernist writer Beckett also drew inspiration from the meditations of the existentialist philosopher and playwright, Jean-Paul Sartre. Indeed, Sartre’s ideas of being, freedom, bad faith, and responsibility all figure prominently in Waiting for Godot, as the characters Estragon (Gogo) and Vladimir (Didi) engage in a hodgepodge of aimless (yet ironically fraught) musings whilst waiting for the arrival of their elusive friend. Although the temporal rift between the two plays is considerable, their openness to creative meaning-making, their questioning of human existence, their exploration of the human psyche, and their critique of interpersonal relations still speak to our increasingly nihilistic, anguished, splintered, and alienated lives.
READING TEXTS:
I. Primary
Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot / En Attendant Godot, Grove Press, 1954. (ISBN 978-0-8021-4463-8)
Freud, Sigmund. “The Theme of the Three Caskets (1913).” The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XII (1911 – 1913), translated and edited by James Strachey, Vintage Books, 2001, pp. 289-301. (Provided)
Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Prince, translated and edited by Peter Bondanella with introduction by Maurizio Viroli, Oxford UP, 2008. (ISBN 978-0-19-953569-9) (Read Ch. 6-8, 15-18, 23, 25, 26)
Montaigne, Michel de. “Of the Affection of Fathers to Their Children.” Shakespeare’s Montaigne: The Florio Translation of the Essays, translated by John Florio and edited with introduction by Stephen Greenblatt, New York Review Books, 2014, pp. 117-141. (Provided)
Sartre, Jean-Paul. “Why Write?” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, 2nd Ed., edited by Vincent B. Leitch, W. W. Norton & Company, 2010, pp. 1199-1213. (Provided)
Shakespeare, William. King Lear, edited by R. A. Foakes, Bloomsbury, 2016. (ISBN 978-1-9034-3659-2)
II. Secondary
Daigle, Christine. Jean-Paul Sartre, Routledge, 2010. (ISBN 0-415-43565-X)
Homer, Sean. Jacques Lacan, Routledge, 2005. (ISBN 0-415-25617-8)
Thurschwell, Pamela. Sigmund Freud, 2nd Ed., Routledge, 2009. (ISBN 0-415-47369-1)