Seneca: Oedipus

Seneca: Oedipus

Author: Susanna Braund

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2015-12-17

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 1474234801

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Oedipus, king of Thebes, is one of the giant figures of ancient mythology. Through the centuries, his story has inspired works of epic poetry, lyric poetry, tragedy, opera, a gospel musical and more. The myth has been famously deployed in psychology by Sigmund Freud. It may not be too bold to claim that Oedipus is the name from Greco-Roman mythology best known beyond the academy at the present time, thanks to Freud's famous phrase 'the Oedipus complex'. The most famous version of the Oedipus myth from antiquity is the Greek play by Sophocles. But there is another version, the Latin drama by the Roman philosopher and politician Seneca. Seneca's version is an entirely different treatment from that of Sophocles and reflects concerns special to the author and his Roman audience in the first century AD. Moreover, the play actually exercised a much greater influence on European literature and thought than has usually been suspected. This book offers a compact and incisive study of the multi-faceted Oedipus myth, of Seneca as dramatist, of the distinctive characteristics of Seneca's play and of the most important aspects of the reception of the play in European drama and culture. The scope of the book ranges chronologically from Homer's treatment of Oedipus myth in the Odyssey down to a twenty-first century Senecan treatment by a Lebanese Canadian dramatist. No knowledge of Latin or other foreign languages is required.


Two Faces of Oedipus

Two Faces of Oedipus

Author: Frederick Ahl

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 9780801473975

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Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus is the most famous of ancient tragedies and a literary masterpiece. It is not, however, the only classical dramatization of Oedipus' quest to discover his identity. Between four and five hundred years after Sophocles' play was first performed, Seneca composed a fine, but neglected and often disparaged Latin tragedy on the same subject, which, in some ways, comes closer to our common understanding of the Oedipus myth. Now, modern readers can compare the two versions, in new translations by Frederick Ahl.Balancing poetry and clarity, yet staying scrupulously close to the original texts, Ahl's English versions are designed to be both read and performed, and are alert to the literary and historical complexities of each. In approaching Sophocles anew, Ahl is careful to preserve the richly allusive nature and rhetorical power of the Greek, including the intricate use of language that gives the original its brilliant force. For Ahl, Seneca's tragedy is vastly and intriguingly different from that of Sophocles, and a poetic masterpiece in its own right. Seneca takes us inside the mind of Oedipus in ways that Sophocles does not, making his inner conflicts a major part of the drama itself in his soliloquies and asides. Two Faces of Oedipus opens with a wide-ranging introduction that examines the conflicting traditions of Oedipus in Greek literature, the different theatrical worlds of Sophocles and Seneca, and how cultural and political differences between Athenian democracy and Roman imperial rule affect the nature and conditions under which the two tragedies were composed. This book brings two dramatic traditions into conversation while providing elegant, accurate, and exciting new versions of Sophocles' and Seneca's tragedies.


Six Tragedies

Six Tragedies

Author: Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2010-01-14

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 0192807064

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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.


Oedipus of Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Oedipus of Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Author:

Publisher: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 116

ISBN-13: 9780865164598

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-- Introduction to Seneca, with: -- a comparison of ancient Greek and Roman drama -- approaches to presenting the play for modern audiences -- Text of Seneca's Oedipus in English adaptation -- Appendix I: Senecan Sources for the New Choral Odes


Roman Tragedy

Roman Tragedy

Author: Anthony J. Boyle

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-05-12

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1134696787

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The first detailed cultural and theatrical history of a major literary form, this landmark introduction examines Roman tragedy and its place at the centre of Rome’s cultural and political life. Analyzing the work of such names as Ennius, Pacuvius and Accius, as well as Seneca and his post-Neronian successors, Anthony J. Boyle delves into detailed discussion on every Roman tragedian whose work survives in substance today. Roman Tragedy examines: the history of Roman tragic techniques and conventions the history of generic form and change the debt that Rome owes to Greece, and text owes to text the birth, development and death of Roman tragedy in the context of the cities evolving, institutions, ideologies and political and social practices tragedy proper and the historical drama (fabula praetexta), which the Romans allied to tragedy. With parallel English translations of Latin quotations, this seminal work not only provides an invaluable resource for students of theatre, Roman political history and cultural history, but it is also accessible to all interested in the social dynamics of writing, spectacle, ideology and power.


Seneca's Characters

Seneca's Characters

Author: Erica M. Bexley

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2022-07-07

Total Pages: 399

ISBN-13: 1108801773

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Seneca's Characters addresses one of the most enduring and least theorised elements of literature: fictional character and its relationship to actual, human selfhood. Where does the boundary between character and person lie? While the characters we encounter in texts are obviously not 'real' people, they still possess person-like qualities that stimulate our attention and engagement. How is this relationship formulated in contexts of theatrical performance, where characters are set in motion by actual people, actual bodies and voices? This book addresses such questions by focusing on issues of coherence, imitation, appearance and autonomous action. It argues for the plays' sophisticated treatment of character, their acknowledgement of its purely fictional ontology alongside deep – and often dark – appreciation of its quasi-human qualities. Seneca's Characters offers a fresh perspective on the playwright's powerful tragic aesthetics that will stimulate scholars and students alike.


Seneca

Seneca

Author: Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 9780801849329

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Plays and translators: Octavia, Kelly Cherry * Hercules Oetaeus, Stephen Sandy * Oedipus, Rachel Hadas * The Phoenician Women, David Slavitt * Hercules Furens, Dana Gioia. Are there no limits to human cruelty? Is there any divine justice? Do the gods even matter if they do not occupy themselves with rewarding virtue and punishing wickedness? Seneca's plays might be dismissed as bombastic and extravagant answers to such questions—if so much of human history were not "Senecan" in its absurdity, melodrama, and terror. Here is an honest artist confronting the irrationality and cruelty of his world—the Rome of Caligula, Claudius, and Nero—and his art reflects the stress of the encounter. The surprise, perhaps, is that Seneca's world is so like our own.