The course is required in order to attend the course ‘Theatre and Literature: adaptation and Creative Writing’. This course provides theatre students with a foundational background in the Humanities and related artistic disciplines, particularly literature, through an examination of the major literary movements and aesthetic trends of the modern European tradition, from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. The course traces the development of literary thought from the Enlightenment and Romanticism to Modernism. It also seeks to familiarize students with major authors of the Western literary canon through the close reading of representative texts.

After the successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

• demonstrate knowledge of the major literary and aesthetic movements of modern European literature and their principal representatives;
• situate aesthetic movements within their historical and cultural contexts and relate them to other art forms, such as music and painting;
• identify and connect literary trends and authors on the basis of their defining characteristics;
• conduct critical readings of literary texts in relation to their historical context and the literary movement with which they are associated;
• apply analytical and critical-thinking skills to the interpretation of literary and cultural texts;
• carry out basic academic research and present their findings effectively;
• produce academic writing in the fields of theatre, cultural, and humanities studies from an interdisciplinary perspective;
• develop the research and writing skills required for scholarly work at university level.