Author: Thomas Kohn Publisher: University of Michigan Press ISBN: 0472028820 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 184
Book Description
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.
Author: Helen Slaney Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0198736762 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 333
Book Description
Alongside the works of the better-known classical Greek dramatists, the tragedies of Lucius Annaeus Seneca have exerted a profound influence over the dramaturgical development of European theatre. The Senecan Aesthetic surveys the multifarious ways in which Senecan tragedy has been staged, from the Renaissance up to the present day: plundered for neo-Latin declamation and seeping into the blood-soaked revenge tragedies of Shakespeare's contemporaries, seasoned with French neoclassical rigor, and inflated by Restoration flamboyance. In the mid-eighteenth century, the pincer movement of naturalism and philhellenism began to squeeze Seneca off the stage until August Wilhelm Schlegel's shrill denunciation silenced what he called its "frigid bombast." The Senecan aesthetic, repressed but still present, staged its return in the twentieth century in the work of Antonin Artaud, who regarded Seneca as "the greatest tragedian of history." This volume restores Seneca to a canonical position among the playwrights of antiquity, recognizing him as one of the most important, most revered, and most reviled, and in doing so reveals how theory, practice, and scholarship have always been interdependent and inseparable.
Author: Alessandra Zanobi Publisher: A&C Black ISBN: 1472506081 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 247
Book Description
Pantomime was arguably the most popular dramatic genre during the Roman Empire, but has been relatively neglected by literary critics. Seneca's Tragedies and the Aesthetics of Pantomime adds to our understanding of Seneca's tragic art by demonstrating that elements which have long puzzled scholars can be attributed to the influence of pantomime. The work argues that certain formal features which depart from the conventions of fifth-century Attic drama can be explained by the influence of, and interaction with, this more popular genre. The work includes a detailed and systematic analysis of the specific pantomime-inspired features of Seneca's tragedies: the loose dramatic structure, the presence of “running commentaries” (minute descriptions of characters undergoing emotional strains or performing specific actions), of monologues of self-analysis, and of narrative set-pieces. Relevant to the culture of Roman imperial culture more generally, Seneca's Tragedies and the Aesthetics of Pantomime includes an outline of the general features of pantomime as a genre. The work shows that the influence of sub-literary-genres such as pantomime and mime, the sister art of pantomime, can be traced in several Roman writers whose literary production was antecedent or contemporary with Seneca's. Furthermore, the work sheds light on the interaction between sub-literary genres of a performative nature such as mime and pantomime and more literary ones, an aspect of Latin culture which previous scholarship has tended to overlook. Seneca's Tragedies and the Aesthetics of Pantomime provides an original contribution to the understanding of the impact of pantomime on Roman literary culture and of controversial and little-understood features of Senecan tragedies.
Author: A. J. Boyle Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1134802315 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 273
Book Description
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.
Author: James Ker Publisher: MHRA ISBN: 0947623981 Category : Drama Languages : en Pages : 354
Book Description
In the early Elizabethan period, nine of the ten tragedies attributed to the ancient Roman statesman, philosopher, and playwright Seneca (c. 1 BCE-65 CE) were translated for the first time into English, and these translations shaped Seneca's dramatic legacy as it would be known to later authors and playwrights. This edition enables readers to appreciate the distinct style and aims of three milestone translations: Jasper Heywood's 'Troas' (1559) and 'Thyestes' (1560), and John Studley's 'Agamemnon' (1566). The plays are presented in modern spelling and accompanied by critical notes clarifying the translators' approaches to rendering Seneca in English. The introduction provides important context, including a survey of the transmission and reception of Seneca from the first through to the sixteenth century and an analysis and comparison of the style of the three translations. James Ker is Associate Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of The Deaths of Seneca (2009), A Seneca Reader (2011), and articles on Greek and Roman literature. Jessica Winston is Professor of English at Idaho State University. She is the author of numerous articles on early Elizabethan literature and the Elizabethan reception of Seneca.
Author: Publisher: BRILL ISBN: 9004310983 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 342
Book Description
In Brill's Companion to the Reception of Senecan Tragedy, Dodson-Robinson incorporates interdisciplinary essays tracing how Western writers from antiquity to the present have transformed Senecan drama to develop competing tragic visions of agency and the human place in the universe.
Author: Curtis Perry Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1108496172 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 307
Book Description
Perry reveals Shakespeare derived modes of tragic characterization, previously seen as presciently modern, via engagement with Rome and Senecan tragedy.
Author: Thomas Kohn
Author: Thomas Kohn
Author: Anna Lydia Motto
Author: John William Cunliffe
Author: Helen Slaney
Author: Alessandra Zanobi
Author: A. J. Boyle
Author: James Ker
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Author: Curtis Perry