Self-representation and Illusion in Senecan TragedyC. A. J. Littlewood approaches Seneca's tragedies as Neronian literature rather than as reworkings of Attic drama, and emphasizes their place in the Roman world and in the Latin literary corpus. The Greek tragic myths are for Seneca mediated by non-dramatic Augustan literature. In literary terms Phaedra's desire, Hippolytus' innocence, and Hercules' ambivalent heroism look back through allusion to Roman elegy, pastoral, and epic respectively. Ethically, the artificiality of Senecan tragedy, the consciousness that its own dramatic worlds, events, and people are literary constructs, responds to the contemporary Stoical dismissal of the public world as mere theatre. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
The Broken World | 15 |
Images of a Flawed Technical Genesis | 103 |
MetaTheatre and SelfConsciousness | 172 |
Intertextuality and Innocence | 259 |
References | 302 |
| 315 | |
| 325 | |
Common terms and phrases
Achilles Aeneid Agamemnon agon allusion Andromache Andromache's anger Argonautic argues Astyanax Atreus audience Boyle Cassandra Cephalus characters chariot chorus Clytemnestra context contrast Creon crime criminal death desire divine dramatic illusion echoes elegiac Epistles erotic Euripides Fantham figure Fitch Furia furor Fury Georgics gods Golden Age Greek Hercules Furens Hercules Oetaeus Hippolytus horror hunting idyll imitation inspiration interpretation ipse irony Jakobi Jason Juno Juno's landscape literary Lycus madness Medea messenger messenger's Metamorphoses mihi moral murder myth narrative nature nefas nunc nurse Oedipus Olympian Orpheus Ovid Ovid's paradox parallel passion pastoral perspective Phaedra Phaethon play pleasure poetic poetry political Polyxena Procne Pyrrhus quae quod recalls representation revenge rhetoric role Roman scene Schiesaro Segal Seneca's Senecan tragedy song spectator speech Stoic Stoicism Tantalus Tarrant Tereus Theseus Thyestes tragic Troades Trojan tyrant Ulysses victim victory Virgil virtus vision words