Anakin Skywalker and the Tragic Hero

04/18/21 • 105 min

Welcome to Star Wars English Class! This week, Julia and Fern introduce themselves, discuss the Star Wars English Class curriculum, and tackle a question that’s been on their minds: is Anakin Skywalker a tragic hero? In this lesson, you will learn about the history of the tragic hero as Fern and Julia trace its roots from Greek and Renaissance tragedy to contemporary fiction. How do we define tragic heroism? To what extent does a tragic hero have agency over his fate? And how does Anakin Skywalker fit into this literary tradition?On the Syllabus:

Sophocles, Oedipus Rex (c. 429 BCE)
William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600)
Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy (1587)
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999)
Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002)
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005)
“Antigone, Sophocles.” Youtube, uploaded by The Center for Hellenic Studies, 5 August
2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSnfzgN7QfA&list=PLq5ea-jR9u2ojLpe4x3suBCx1eGuXwnL2&index=21
Aristotle. “Poetics.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism: Second Edition, edited by Vincent B. Leitch, W. W. Norton & Company, 2010, pp. 88-115.
”Bacchae, Euripides - Reading Greek Tragedy Online.” Youtube, uploaded by The Center for Hellenic Studies, 20 April 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAt1FDCF2hQ&list=PLq5ea-jR9u2ojLpe4x3suBCx1eGuXwnL2&index=6
Boas, George. “The Evolution of the Tragic Hero.” The Carleton Drama Review, vol. 1, no. 1, 1955, pp. 5–21. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1124612.
Bradley, A.C. Shakespearean Tragedy. St. Martin's Press, 1985.
“CHS Dialogues with Gregory Nagy | Tragedy, Anger, and Agamemnon.” Youtube, uploaded by The Center for Hellenic Studies, 5 November 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0Ez3HT_TJo&list=PLq5ea-jR9u2prF3fg9FCJPGEz6TJzDwH2&index=14&t=450s
Krieger, Murray. “Tragedy and the Tragic Vision.” The Kenyon Review, vol. 20, no. 2, 1958, pp. 281–299. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4333856.
McDonald, Russ. "Theater à la Mode: Shakespeare and the Kinds of Drama." The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare: An Introduction with Documents, 79-108.
Segal, Charles. Oedipus Tyrannus: Tragic Heroism and the Limits of Knowledge. Twayne Publishers, 1993.
Segal, Charles. “Charles Segal on the Greatness of Oedipus the King.” Sophocles’ Oedipus Plays: A Contemporary Literary Views Book, edited by Harold Bloom, Chelsea House Publishers, 1996, pp. 73-75.

Social Media:
@swenglishclass on Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram
Julia is on TikTok @juliachristine77
Fern is on TikTok @alwaysfern
Business inquiries: [email protected]
Logo by Jacob David Earl (@jacobdavidearl)
Music by ZapSplat.com

Sophocles, Oedipus Rex (c. 429 BCE)
William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600)
Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy (1587)
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999)
Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002)
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005)
“Antigone, Sophocles.” Youtube, uploaded by The Center for Hellenic Studies, 5 August
2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSnfzgN7QfA&list=PLq5ea-jR9u2ojLpe4x3suBCx1eGuXwnL2&index=21
Aristotle. “Poetics.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism: Second Edition, edited by Vincent B. Leitch, W. W. Norton & Company, 2010, pp. 88-115.
”Bacchae, Euripides - Reading Greek Tragedy Online.” Youtube, uploaded by The Center for Hellenic Studies, 20 April 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAt1FDCF2hQ&list=PLq5ea-jR9u2ojLpe4x3suBCx1eGuXwnL2&index=6
Boas, George. “The Evolution of the Tragic Hero.” The Carleton Drama Review, vol. 1, no. 1, 1955, pp. 5–21. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1124612.
Bradley, A.C. Shakespearean Tragedy. St. Martin's Press, 1985.
“CHS Dialogues with Gregory Nagy | Tragedy, Anger, and Agamemnon.” Youtube, uploaded by The Center for Hellenic Studies, 5 November 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0Ez3HT_TJo&list=PLq5ea-jR9u2prF3fg9FCJPGEz6TJzDwH2&index=14&t=450s
Krieger, Murray. “Tragedy and the Tragic Vision.” The Kenyon Review, vol. 20, no. 2, 1958, pp. 281–299. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4333856.
McDonald, Russ. "Theater à la Mode: Shakespeare and the Kinds of Drama." The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare: An Introduction with Documents, 79-108.
Segal, Charles. Oedipus Tyrannus: Tragic Heroism and the Limits of Knowledge. Twayne Publishers, 1993.
Segal, Charles. “Charles Segal on the Greatness of Oedipus the King.” Sophocles’ Oedipus Plays: A Contemporary Literary Views Book, edited by Harold Bloom, Chelsea House Publishers, 1996, pp. 73-75.

Next Episode

Somehow, Palpatine Returned: Reading Star Wars as Camp

In this episode, Fern teaches Julia about Camp! Camp is a mode of aestheticism that focuses on exaggeration, artifice, and playfulness. It is, according to Susan Sontag, “the good taste of bad taste,” a way of looking at a text that encourages readers to be “serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious.” Is Star Wars, with all its focus on visuals and aesthetics, its exaggerated characters, its juxtaposition of sci-fi glamour and dirt, Camp? What do we gain if we choose to read it as Camp? Does its overtly political themes and messaging negate a Camp reading of the text? And is “Somehow, Palpatine returned” the Campiest line in contemporary cinema?

On the Syllabus:

Susan Sontag, “Notes on Camp” (1964)
Franziska Bergmann, Ingrid Hotz-Davies, Georg Vogt, The Dark Side of Camp Aesthetics: Queer Economies of Dirt, Dust, and Patina (2017)
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977)
Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002)
Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)