ENGL 204: Drama as Literature

Citrus College Course Outline of Record

Citrus College Course Outline of Record
Heading Value
Effective Term: Fall 2025
Credits: 3
Total Contact Hours: 54
Lecture Hours : 54
Lab Hours: 0
Hours Arranged: 0
Outside of Class Hours: 108
Total Student Learning Hours: 162
Strongly Recommended: ENGL C1000.
District General Education: C2. Humanities
Transferable to CSU: Yes
Transferable to UC: Yes - Approved
Grading Method: Standard Letter

Catalog Course Description

An introduction to drama as literature. This course will focus on reading and analyzing plays that have been influential in our society. Students will study theatrical terms, play production, and the history of the theater. 54 lecture hours.

Course Objectives

  • apply the techniques of literary analysis to the study of plays
  • explain the history of dramatic traditions particularly in Greece
  • identify, interpret, and discuss dramatic structure (such as setting, dialogue, and conflict)
  • apply various critical approaches to the interpretation of dramatic works
  • evaluate plays from a variety of historical and cultural perspectives
  • understand the development of the theater

Major Course Content

  1. Introduction to Drama as a genre
    1. Literary elements
    2. Types of drama
  2. Historical Context
    1. Greek Theater
    2. Roman Theater
    3. Classical Indian, Chinese, Japanese Theater
    4. Medieval European Theater
    5. Theater in Early Modern Europe (1500-1700)
    6. Eighteenth-Century Theater
    7. Romanticism and Melodrama
    8. Realism in the Nineteenth Century
    9. Modernism
    10. Post-Modernism
    11. Theater of the Absurd
    12. Contemporary 
  3. Textual Analysis of Plays
    1. Antiquity through the Eighteenth Century (e.g. Sophocles, Euripides, Marlowe, and Shakespeare)
    2. The Nineteenth through Twenty-First Century (e.g. Ibsen, Chekhov, Glaspell, Miller, Beckett, and Wilson)
  4. Drama as Performance
  5. Writing about Drama
  6. Appreciation of Drama
  7. Film Adaptations

Suggested Reading Other Than Required Textbook

Criticism and discussions of dramatic theory available online and in the library.

Examples of Required Writing Assignments

Write an essay of four to six pages in length where they analyze Beckett's Waiting for Godot and establish how the text fits in the genre of Absurdist theater. The analysis should use specific examples from the primary text and two secondary sources to support the argument.

Examples of Outside Assignments

Analyze one of the Greek plays we have read in light of the elements of drama described in Aristotle's Poetics.

Instruction Type(s)

Lecture, Online Education Lecture