The Teaching of Classical Drama: Iphigenie auf Tauris

Abstract

Nowadays serious attention is paid more often to students' likes and dislikes than formerly, when the stern judgment, is good for them, carried more weight than the cautious plea, They don't care for As a result, second-year language classes read scarcely anything but modern stories supposedly dealing with timely events and problems; and even in third-year courses for majors the old standard 18thand 19th-century classics are rapidly losing ground. I have been grieved to hear it said especially of Iphigenie auf Tauris actually the first work of German literature given me to read as a college freshman and very well received by me and my fellow students then that is impossible to teach anymore. It is argued that students of the 1970's have almost insuperable difficulties with the language of this play and, worse, have neither any interest whatever in its refined idealism nor appreciation of its formal style. In a word, they are utterly bored by it. I must modestly report, however, that my own recent experiences with this text in class do not bear out such deprecating views. Therefore I continue to urge that Iphigenie auf Tauris be included in third-year Introduction to Literature courses (and in Humanities courses in English translation') as the prime example of what is known, in the broad sense of the term, as classical drama in verse.2