Self-representation and Illusion in Senecan Tragedy

Self-representation and Illusion in Senecan Tragedy PDF

Author: Cedric A. J. Littlewood

Publisher: Oxford Classical Monographs

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 9780199267613

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This ethical context is a productive frame of reference for interpreting the strange artificiality of Senecan tragedy, the consciousness that its own dramatic worlds, events, and people are literary constructs. In Troades for example Achilles' ghost and its vengeance is represented both as an inexorable dramatic reality and the creature of a fabula to be dismissed as a malignant fiction."--BOOK JACKET.

Seneca and the Idea of Tragedy

Seneca and the Idea of Tragedy PDF

Author: Gregory A. Staley

Publisher: OUP USA

Published: 2010-01-14

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 0195387430

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The question of why Seneca wrote tragedy has been debated since at least the 13th century. Since Seneca was a Stoic, critics assumed he wrote with the standard Stoic theory of literature as education in philosophy in mind. This book argues that Seneca was influenced by Aristotle's famous defense of tragedy against Plato's critique.

Vital Strife

Vital Strife PDF

Author: Benjamin C. Parris

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2022-08-15

Total Pages: 189

ISBN-13: 1501764519

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Vital Strife examines the close yet puzzling relationship between sleep and ethical care in early modernity. The plays, poems, and philosophical essays at the heart of this book—by Jasper Heywood, William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, John Milton, and Margaret Cavendish—explore the unconscious motions of corporeal life and the drowsy forms of sentience at the boundaries of human thought and intentionality. Benjamin Parris shows how these writers, although trained under the Renaissance humanist paradigm of attentive care, begin to dissolve the humanist coupling of virtue with vigilance by giving credence to the vital power of sleep. In contrast to humanist thinkers who equated sleep with carelessness, these writers draw on the ancient Stoic principle of oikeiôsis—the process of orienting the living being toward its proper objects of care, beginning with itself—in asserting the value of sleep, while underscoring insomnia's threat to the ethical flourishing of persons and polity alike. Parris offers an important revaluation of Stoic philosophy, which has too often been misconstrued as renouncing feeling and sympathetic connection with others. With its striking new account of the reception of Stoicism and attitudes toward sleep and sleeplessness in early modern thought, Vital Strife reveals the period's mounting concern with the regenerative nature of physical life and its elaboration of a newfound ethics of care.

The Sublime Seneca

The Sublime Seneca PDF

Author: Erik Gunderson

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2015-01-26

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 1316240975

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This is an extended meditation on ethics in literature across the Senecan corpus. There are two chapters on the Moral Letters, asking how one is to read philosophy or how one can write about being. Moving from the Letters to the Natural Questions and Dialogues, Professor Gunderson explores how authorship works at the level both of the work and of the world, the ethics of seeing, and the question of how one can give up on the here and now and behold instead some other, better ethical sphere. Seneca's tragedies offer words of caution: desire might well subvert reason at its most profound level (Phaedra), or humanity's painful separation from the sublime might be part of some cruel divine plan (The Madness of Hercules). The book concludes by considering what, if anything, we are to make of Seneca's efforts to enlighten us.

Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity

Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity PDF

Author: Colin Burrow

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2013-09-05

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 0191507687

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

OXFORD SHAKESPEARE TOPICS General Editors: Peter Holland and Stanley Wells Oxford Shakespeare Topics provide students and teachers with short books on important aspects of Shakespeare criticism and scholarship. Each book is written by an authority in its field, and combines accessible style with original discussion of its subject. This book explains that Shakespeare did not have 'small Latin and less Greek' as Ben Jonson claimed. Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity shows the range, extent and variety of Shakespeare's responses to classical antiquity. Individual chapters on Virgil, Ovid, Classical Comedy, Seneca, and Plutarch show how Shakespeare's understanding of and use of classical authors, and of the classical past more generally, changed and developed in the course of his career. An opening chapter shows the kind of classical learning he acquired through his education, and subsequent chapters provide stimulating introductions to a range of classical authors as well as to Shakespeare's responses to them. Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity shows how Shakespeare's relationship to classical authors changed in response to contemporary events and to contemporary authors. Above all, it shows that Shakespeare's reading in classical literature informed more or less every aspect of his work.

Roman Drama and its Contexts

Roman Drama and its Contexts PDF

Author: Stavros Frangoulidis

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2016-03-21

Total Pages: 593

ISBN-13: 3110455587

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Roman plays have been well studied individually (even including fragmentary or spurious ones more recently). However, they have not always been placed into their ‘context’, though plays (just like items in other literary genres) benefit from being seen in context. This edited collection aims to address this issue: it includes 33 contributions by an international team of scholars, discussing single plays or Roman dramatic genres (including comedy, tragedy and praetexta, from both the Republican and imperial periods) in contexts such as the literary tradition, the relationship to works in other literary genres, the historical and social situation, the intellectual background or the later reception. Overall, they offer a rich panorama of the role of Roman drama or individual plays in Roman society and literary history. The insights gained thereby will be of relevance to everyone interested in Roman drama or literature more generally, comparative literature or drama and theatre studies. This contextual approach has the potential of changing the way in which Roman drama is viewed.

Brill's Companion to Seneca

Brill's Companion to Seneca PDF

Author: Andreas Heil

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2015-03-20

Total Pages: 895

ISBN-13: 9004217088

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This new and important introduction to Seneca provides a systematic and concise presentation of this author’s philosophical works and his tragedies. It provides handbook style surveys of each genuine or attributed work, giving dates and brief descriptions, and taking into account the most important philosophical and philological issues. In addition, they provide accounts of the major steps in the history of their later influence. The cultural background of the texts and the most important problem areas within the philosophic and tragic corpus of Seneca are dealt with in separate essays.

Ancient Memory

Ancient Memory PDF

Author: Katharine Mawford

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2021-07-05

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 3110728796

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Although the recent ‘memory boom’ has led to increasing interdisciplinary interest, there is a significant gap relating to the examination of this topic in Classics. In particular, there is need for a systematic exploration of ancient memory and its use as a critical and methodological tool for delving into ancient literature. The present volume provides just such an approach, theorising the use and role of memory in Graeco-Roman thought and literature, and building on the background of memory studies. The volume’s contributors apply theoretical models such as memoryscapes, civic and cultural memory, and memory loss to a range of authors, from Homeric epic to Senecan drama, and from historiography to Cicero’s recollections of performances. The chapters are divided into four sections according to the main perspective taken. These are: 1) the Mechanics of Memory, 2) Collective memory, 3) Female Memory, and 4) Oblivion. This modern approach to ancient memory will be useful for scholars working across the range of Greek and Roman literature, as well as for students, and a broader interdisciplinary audience interested in the intersection of memory studies and Classics.

Seneca Philosophus

Seneca Philosophus PDF

Author: Jula Wildberger

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2014-08-20

Total Pages: 520

ISBN-13: 3110349868

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Das Buch wendet sich an Fachleute ebenso wie Studierende und das allgemeine Publikum. Es präsentiert eine ungewöhnliche Vielfalt von Beiträgern verschiedener Generationen, Fachrichtungen und nationaler Wissenskulturen, teilweise zum ersten Mal überhaupt in Englisch. Gemeinsam betonen sie die Einheit von Senecas Oeuvre und seine Originalität als Mittler stoischen Gedankenguts in den literarischen Formen des Prinzipats.