D. Nicholas Rudall on "What We Call Greek Tragedy"

Sponsored by the University of Chicago's Franke Institute for the Humanities, the Franke Forum is a series of free public talks by renowned University scholars.

This Franke Forum talk, "What We Call Greek Tragedy" is given by D. Nicholas Rudall, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Classics and Founding Director of Court Theatre.

The commonplace term "Greek Tragedy" diffuses our necessary analytical concentration on the following facts: the surviving plays were written in the sixty year period of Athenian dominance and decline by Athenian authors and were frequently a response to current events which deeply affected the polis. The plays assumed enormous political and artistic significance because they were performed only once in the Theatre of Dionysus for almost the entire enfranchised male population of the city.