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Christopher Trinacty's
Senecan Tragedy and the Reception of Augustan Poetry uniquely places Senecan tragedy in its Roman literary context, offering a further dimension to the motivations and meaning behind Seneca's writings. By reading Senecan tragedy through an intertextual lens,
List of contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1. Seneca the Reader
- 2. Intertextuality and Character
- 3. Intertextuality and Plot
- 4. Intertextuality, Writers, and Readers
- 5. Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index of Passages
- General Index
About the author
Christopher V. Trinacty is Assistant Professor of Classics at Oberlin College.
Summary
Christopher Trinacty's Senecan Tragedy and the Reception of Augustan Poetry uniquely places Senecan tragedy in its Roman literary context, offering a further dimension to the motivations and meaning behind Seneca's writings. By reading Senecan tragedy through an intertextual lens,
Additional text
In crisp, clear prose, Trinacty mounts a reading of the texts of Seneca's dramatic poems as full participants in the intertextual system of meanings and significances that scholars have discerned in Augustan poetry and its Hellenistic models. Thanks to his cogent arguments and sensitive readings, it will henceforth no longer be possible to characterize the allusive presences of Virgil, Horace, and Ovid in Seneca's poetry as mere reminiscences or symptoms of an impoverished belatedness. This is an impressive contribution, and a most welcome one, to the study of a Roman author whose seriousness as a poet as well as a philosopher is once again fully visible for the first time in several centuries.