Seven Great Plays as Philosophy and Literature
Date:
Jun 27, 1993
This course is a unique exercise in two skills: philosophic detection and rational esthetic judgment. Dr. Peikoff analyus seven great plays from ancient Greece to the 20th Century (works by Sophocles, Shakespeare, Corneille, Schiller, Ibsen, Shaw and––a favorite of Ayn Rand's––Maeterlinck's Monna Vanna). In each case, he shows how to discover the essence of the plot and the motivation of the central characters. He then demonstrates how to identify a play's theme and deeper abstract meaning. Concluding each lecture with analytic remarks about the author's style, Dr. Peikoff also shows how to reach a full, objective evaluation of an artwork, taking into account philosophical, esthetic, and personal (optional) factors.
NOTE: the title above is the original title of this course
theater
Parts:
8
Handout:
none
Publications:
-
e-Store, 2012
(En)
- 1107 mins
- Lectures from this conference, plus an additional lecture on Cyrano de Bergerac from 1994
-
Print, 2017
(En)
- As "Discovering Great Plays" - includes Cyrano lecture
-
Campus, 2018
(En)
- 1062 mins
- Lectures from TJS 93 plus a lecture on Cyrano de Bergerac from 1994
-
Online, 2018
(En)
- 830 mins
- Unabridged audio download of "Discovering Great Plays: As Literature and as Philosophy"
-
YouTube, 2020
(En)
- 143 mins
- Part 1 - Antigone by Sophocles
-
YouTube, 2020
(En)
- 103 mins
- Part 2 - Othello by William Shakespeare
-
YouTube, 2020
(En)
- 114 mins
- Part 3 - Le Cid by Pierre Corneille
-
YouTube, 2020
(En)
- 126 mins
- Part 4 - Don Carlos by Friedrich Schiller
-
YouTube, 2020
(En)
- 116 mins
- Part 5 - An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen
-
YouTube, 2020
(En)
- 116 mins
- Part 6 - Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw
-
YouTube, 2020
(En)
- 121 mins
- Part 7 - Monna Vanna by Maurice Maeterlinck
-
YouTube, 2020
(En)
- 111 mins
- Part 8 - Literary and Philosophical Evaluation of Seven Great Plays