Read more
Zusatztext Accessible and readable, and interesting in its approach to reception, weaving it into a reading of the play rather than appending it. Informationen zum Autor Helen Slaney is a researcher in Classics and Program Manager for Graduate Research at La Trobe University, Australia. Her publications include The Senecan Aesthetic: A Performance History (2015) and Seneca: Medea (Bloomsbury, 2019), as well as numerous articles on the reception of antiquity in the early-modern world. Zusammenfassung Composed in early imperial Rome by Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Stoic philosopher and tutor to the emperor Nero, the tragedy Medea is dominated by the superhuman energy of its protagonist: diva, killer, enchantress, force of nature. Seneca’s treatment of the myth covers an episode identical to that of Euripides’ Greek version, enabling instructive comparisons to be drawn. Seneca’s Medea has challenged and fascinated theatre-makers across cultures and centuries and should be regarded as integral to the classical heritage of European theatre. This companion volume sketches the essentials of Seneca’s play and at the same time situates it within an interpretive tradition. It also uses Medea to illustrate key features of Senecan dramaturgy, the way in which language functions as a mode of theatrical representation and the way in which individuals are embedded in their surrounding conditions, resonating dissonantly with the principles of Roman Stoicism. By interweaving some of the play’s subsequent receptions, theatrical and textual, into critical analysis of Medea as dramatic poetry, this companion volume will encourage the student to come to grips immediately with the ancient text’s inherent multiplicity. In this way, reception theory informs not only the content of the volume but also, fundamentally, the way in which it is presented. Inhaltsverzeichnis 1. Seneca and Roman Drama Personal Context Philosophical Context Political Context Performance Context 2. The Myth of Medea Ovid’s Medea Epic and Lyric Medea in Tragedy Medea in Visual Art 3. Themes It’s All Coming Back to Me ( cuncta redeant ) The Angry Sea ( mare provocatum ) Now I’m Medea ( Medea nunc sum ) 4. Language and Style Extreme Passion Extreme Rhetoric Studley’s Medea 5. Witchcraft and Stagecraft The Roman Witch The French Witch 6. Becoming Medea Reconciliations Rituals Landscapes Further Reading Index ...
