The Senecan aesthetic : a performance history / Helen Slaney.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Slaney, Helen, 1981- author.

Series:

Classical presences

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, approximately 4 B.C.-65 A.D. Tragedies.

Seneca, Lucius Annaeus.

Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, approximately 4 B.C.-65 A.D--Criticism and interpretation.

Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, approximately 4 B.C.-65 A.D.

Latin drama (Tragedy)--History and criticism.

Latin drama (Tragedy).

Tragedies (Seneca, Lucius Annaeus).

Criticism and interpretation.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

viii, 320 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2016.

Summary:

Attempts to receive the texts, images, and material culture of ancient Greece and Rome inevitably run the risk of appropriating the past in order to authenticate the present. Exploring the ways in which the classical past has been mapped over the centuries allows us to trace the avowal and disavowal of values and identities, old and new. Classical Presences brings the latest scholarship to bear on the contexts, theory, and practice of such use, and abuse, of the classical past. 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 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. Book jacket.

Contents:

0.1 Senecan, Performance, Reception 2

0.2 What's senecan about Seneca? 16

1 The Open Book 39

1.1 In Defence of Student Theatre 40

1.2 Neo-Latin Performance Practice 47

1.3 Progne 54

1.4 Theatre in Education 61

2 'Excess is her Disease' 71

2.1 Translating the Tenne Tragedies 72

2.2 English(ed) Seneca 80

2.3 Jacobean Variations 89

3 Nourished on Blood 99

3.1 Enter the Diva 101

3.2 The Art of Tragedy 105

3.3 Réalisme sénéquien 110

3.4 Translation and Adaptation 117

3.5 The Merveilleux 125

4 The Great Repression 135

4.1 Tragedy Regulated 137

4.2 Phaedra/Phèdre 146

5 Hypertragedy 165

5.1 Neronian Gambols 167

5.2 Horror Plays of the Exclusion Crisis 174

6 Seneca Censored 189

6.1 The Long Eighteenth Century 190

6.2 A Backdrop to Schlegel 200

6.3 Colossal, Misshapen Marionettes 209

7 Signalling through the Flames 219

7.1 Shelley's Cenci 220

7.2 Artaud's Cenci 228

8 Seneca in'68 243

8.1 Deeper into Language 244

8.2 The Fetters of the Eyes 260.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 281-314) and index.

ISBN:

9780198736769

0198736762

OCLC:

936526995