We tend to assume that conflicts need to be resolved. But what if conflict were at the core of politics, society and the family? This course will investigate medieval, early modern and modern material focusing on scenes of contest and modes of relationship that foster domination and exclusion. The set literary, philosophical, operatic, archival and filmic texts depict individuals and collectives living through some of the major conflicts of European history: Troy, the Hundred Years' War, the Wars of Religion and the French Revolution. Intertwined with these large-scale confrontations are generational, social and gender conflicts, and personal antagonisms.

Jane Lumley’s translation of Euripides' play, Iphigenia in Aulis, is set just before the start of the Trojan War: before the War can begin innocent blood must be shed, setting in train a tragedy at once domestic, royal and international.

Joan of Arc. One of France's patron saints is a village girl burned at the stake in 1431, aged 19. Joan altered the course of the century-long war for the French crown, thus contributing to the development of the modern world of nation-states. Joan has been interpreted, appropriated and venerated ever since. We shall study some of the surviving medieval documents, including trial documents and the celebration of her victories by France's earliest female professional writer, Christine de Pizan. We shall also look at two representations produced in the 1920s, shortly after World War I, when her popularity among French soldiers led to her canonisation: Carl Theodor Dreyer's silent film, The Passion of Joan of Arc, and George Bernard Shaw's play, Saint Joan.

Shakespeare, Henry V: one of the great patriotic texts, an affirmation of English greatness at home and abroad, but also a complex exploration of power and warfare, of national unity, and of the political value of both collective memory and forgetting. What challenges and opportunities does it offer to audiences today?

The Religious Wars and their aftermath: a dossier, including John Locke’s infamous text on toleration; and a selection of Bayle’s texts on religious (in)tolerance and the political.

Gender and social conflicts erupt in the household of Count D'Almaviva in one of the most famous operas by Mozart, The Marriage of Figaro. We will read how characters in this opera are representative of the revolutionary ideals that in three years’ time would usher Romanticism in Europe. Our companion will be the autobiography of the librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte, one of the great adventurers of the 18th Century.