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The plays of Seneca the Younger, minister and philosopher under Nero, are today increasingly studied, appreciated and performed. Here, in twelve new papers from a distinguished international cast, scholars explore established questions, such as whether the plays were written for the stage, and newer topics such as the playwright's subtleties of characterisation, his relation to contemporary Roman spectacle and art - and the problems arising in translating him to modern text or stage.
This monograph is devoted to the most important of Seneca's tragedies, Thyestes, which has had a notable influence on Western drama from Shakespeare to Antonin Artaud. Thyestes emerges as the mastertext of 'Silver' Latin poetry, and as an original reflection on the nature of theatre comparable to Euripides' Bacchae. The book analyses the complex structure of the play, its main themes, the relationship between Seneca's vibrant style and his obsession with dark issues of revenge and regression. Substantial discussion of other plays - especially Trojan Women, Oedipus and Medea - permits a comprehensive re-evaluation of Seneca's poetics and its pivotal role in post-Virgilian literature. Topics explored include the relationship between Seneca's plays and his theory of the emotions, the connection between poetic inspiration and the Underworld, and Seneca's treatment of time, which, in a perspective informed by psychoanalysis, is seen as a central preoccupation of Senecan tragedy.
Tragic Seneca undertakes a radical re-evaluation of Seneca's plays, their relationship to Roman imperial culture and their instrumental role in the evolution of the European theatrical tradition. Following an introduction on the history of the Roman theatre, the book provides a dramatic and cultural critique of the whole of Seneca's corpus, analysing the declamatory form of the plays, their rhetoric, interiority, stagecraft and spectacle, dramatic, ideological and moral structure and their overt theatricality. Each of Seneca's plays is examined in detail, locating the force of Senecan drama not only in the moral complexity of the texts and their representations of power, violence, history, suffering and the self, but the semiotic interplay of text, tradition and culture. The later chapters focus on Seneca's influence on Italian, English and French drama of the Renaissance. A.J. Boyle argues that tragedians such as Cinthio, Kyd, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Webster, Corneille, and Racine owe a debt to Seneca that goes beyond allusion, dramatic form and the treatment of tyranny and revenge to the development of the tragic sensibility and the metatheatrical mind. Tragic Seneca attempts to restore Seneca to a central position in the European literary tradition. It will provide readers and directors of Seneca's plays with the essential critical guide to their intellectual, cultural and dramatic complexity.
In the absence of the stage directions employed by their modern equivalents, ancient playwrights were obliged to ''encode'' information into their texts that can be described as implicit stage directions. It is the presence of such information that permits modern ''production criticism,'' intended to determine how ancient plays were meant to be staged. Since the early nineteenth century, it has been debated whether Seneca's tragedies were or were not written for stage production. Seneca's dramatic texts contain material that looks precisely like the implicit stage directions found in all other ancient drama, and when his plays are subjected to production criticism, it emerges that they make sound dramaturgic sense. Also, Seneca avails himself of the same artificial and sometimes irrational dramatic conventions used by other ancient playwrights, a fact often ignored by those who argue that Seneca was only writing plays for reading or recitation. The internal evidence of the plays offers much to support, and little to contradict, the idea that his plays were written with the stage in mind.
Written in Nero's Rome in about AD62, "Thyestes" is one of the greatest and most influential of classical tragedies. Peter Davies explores the key aspects of the play including the circumstances of its composition, its performance history and its impact on subsequent dramatists.
This is a lively, readable and accurate verse translation of the six best plays by one of the most influential of all classical Latin writers. The volume includes Phaedra, Oedipus, Medea, Trojan Women, Hercules Furens, and Thyestes, together with an invaluable introduction and notes.
The first-century Roman tragedies of Seneca, like all ancient drama, do not contain the sort of external stage directions that we are accustomed to today; nevertheless, a careful reading of the plays reveals such stage business as entrances, exits, setting, sound effects, emotions of the characters, etc. The Dramaturgy of Senecan Tragedy teases out these dramaturgical elements in Seneca's work and uses them both to aid in the interpretation of the plays and to show the playwright's artistry. Thomas D. Kohn provides a detailed overview of the corpus, laying the groundwork for appreciating Seneca's techniques in the individual dramas. Each of the chapters explores an individual tragedy in detail, discussing the dramatis personae and examining how the roles would be distributed among a limited number of actors, as well as the identity of the Chorus. The Dramaturgy of Senecan Tragedymakes a compelling argument for Seneca as an artist and a dramaturg in the true sense of the word: "a maker of drama." Regardless of whether Seneca composed his plays for full-blown theatrical staging, a fictive theater of the mind, or something in between, Kohn demonstrates that he displays a consistency and a careful attentiveness to details of performance. While other scholars have applied this type of performance criticism to individual tragedies or scenes, this is the first comprehensive study of all the plays in twenty-five years, and the first ever to consider not just stagecraft, but also metatheatrical issues such as the significant distribution of roles among a limited number of actors, in addition to the emotional states of the characters. Scholars of classics and theater, along with those looking to stage the plays, will find much of interest in this study.
The Senecan Aesthetic surveys the multifarious ways in which Senecan tragedy has been staged, from the Renaissance up to the present day, and restores Seneca to a canonical position among the playwrights of antiquity, recognizing him as one of the most important, most revered, and most reviled.
Composed in early imperial Rome by Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Stoic philosopher and tutor to the emperor Nero, the tragedy Medea is dominated by the superhuman energy of its protagonist: diva, killer, enchantress, force of nature. Seneca's treatment of the myth covers an episode identical to that of Euripides' Greek version, enabling instructive comparisons to be drawn. Seneca's Medea has challenged and fascinated theatre-makers across cultures and centuries and should be regarded as integral to the classical heritage of European theatre. This companion volume sketches the essentials of Seneca's play and at the same time situates it within an interpretive tradition. It also uses Medea to illustrate key features of Senecan dramaturgy, the way in which language functions as a mode of theatrical representation and the way in which individuals are embedded in their surrounding conditions, resonating dissonantly with the principles of Roman Stoicism. By interweaving some of the play's subsequent receptions, theatrical and textual, into critical analysis of Medea as dramatic poetry, this companion volume will encourage the student to come to grips immediately with the ancient text's inherent multiplicity. In this way, reception theory informs not only the content of the volume but also, fundamentally, the way in which it is presented.
The Roman statesman, philosopher and playwright Lucius Annaeus Seneca dramatically influenced the progression of Western thought. His works have had an unparalleled impact on the development of ethical theory, shaping a code of behavior for dealing with tyranny in his own age that endures today. This Companion thoroughly examines the complete Senecan corpus, with special emphasis on the aspects of his writings that have challenged interpretation. The authors place Seneca in the context of the ancient world and trace his impressive legacy in literature, art, religion, and politics from Neronian Rome to the early modern period. Through critical discussion of the recent proliferation of Senecan studies, this volume compellingly illustrates how the perception of Seneca and his particular type of Stoicism has evolved over time. It provides a comprehensive overview that will benefit students and scholars in classics, comparative literature, history, philosophy and political theory, as well as general readers.