The Senecan Aesthetic: A Performance HistoryAlongside 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 rigour, 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. |
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Contents
| 1 | |
The Open Book | 39 |
Excess is her Disease | 71 |
Nourished on Blood | 99 |
The Great Repression | 135 |
Hypertragedy | 165 |
Seneca Censored | 189 |
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Common terms and phrases
action actor Agamemnon ancient appears Artaud Atreus audience audience’s aural Barrault Beatrice blood body C’est Cenci century chorus classical Cléopâtre Clytemnestra contemporary Corneille Corneille’s corpus Cruelty death dialogue discourse dramaturgical early modern ecphrasis Edipe effects Elizabethan emotional English Euripides expression figures French Furies Garnier’s gesture ghost Hardy’s Hercules Furens Hercules Oetaeus Hippolytus horror human hyperbole identifies Jonson’s Kleist’s labyrinth Laius language Lee’s less Medea Médée medium metaphor metatheatrical mimetic murder neo-Latin neoclassical nevertheless Oedipus onstage pain passion Penthesilea performance Phaed Phaedra Phèdre physical plague play’s playwright plot poetic production Progne Quintilian Racine Racine’s rage reception reference regarded represent representation revenge tragedy rhetorical Roman scene Schlegel Sejanus Seneca’s Oedipus Seneca’s plays senecan aesthetic Senecan characters senecan drama Senecan tragedy Shakespeare’s Shelley’s space spectator speech stage Taille’s Tamburlaine Tenne Tragedies theatre theatrical Theseus Thyestes tion Titus Andronicus tragic translation Troades tropes verbal visual vocal voice words Zwierlein’s
Bibliographic information
| Title | The Senecan Aesthetic: A Performance History Classical Presences |
| Author | Helen Slaney |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press, 2015 |
| ISBN | 019105643X, 9780191056437 |
| Length | 336 pages |
| Subjects | › › Art / Performance History / Ancient / General Literary Criticism / Ancient & Classical Literary Criticism / Drama Literary Criticism / General Literary Criticism / Renaissance Literary Criticism / Shakespeare Performing Arts / Theater / General |
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