Senecan Tragedy and the Reception of Augustan Poetry

Christopher V. Trinacty

The first study to consider the intertextual relationship between the Augustan poets and Seneca in a truly systematic and complete way
Uniquely places Senecan tragedy in its Roman literary context, offering a further dimension to the motivations and meaning behind Seneca's writings

Senecan Tragedy and the Reception of Augustan Poetry

Christopher V. Trinacty

Description

In their practice of aemulatio, the mimicry of older models of writing, the Augustan poets often looked to the Greeks: Horace drew inspiration from the lyric poets, Virgil from Homer, and Ovid from Hesiod, Callimachus, and others. But by the time of the great Roman tragedian Seneca, the Augustan poets had supplanted the Greeks as the "classics" to which Seneca and his contemporaries referred. Indeed, Augustan poetry is a reservoir of language, motif, and thought for Seneca's writing. Strangely, however, there has not yet been a comprehensive study revealing the relationship between Seneca and his Augustan predecessors. Christopher Trinacty's Senecan Tragedy and the Reception of Augustan Poetry is the long-awaited answer to the call for such a study.

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, Trinacty reveals Seneca's awareness of his historical moment, in which the Augustan period was eroding steadily around him. Seneca, looking back to the poetry of Horace, Virgil, and Ovid, acts as a critical interpreter of both their work and their era. He deconstructs the language of the Augustan poets, refiguring it through the perspective of his tragic protagonists. In doing so, he positions himself as a critic of the Augustan tradition and reveals a poetic voice that often subverts the classical ethos of that tradition. Through this process of reappropriation Seneca reveals much about himself as a playwright and as a man: In the inventive manner in which he re-employs the Augustan poets' language, thought, and poetics within the tragic framework, Seneca gives his model works new--and uniquely Senecan--life.

Trinacty's analysis sheds new light both on Seneca and on his Augustan predecessors. As such, Senecan Tragedy and the Reception of Augustan Poetry promises to be a groundbreaking contribution to the study of both Senecan tragedy and Augustan poetry.

Senecan Tragedy and the Reception of Augustan Poetry

Christopher V. Trinacty

Senecan Tragedy and the Reception of Augustan Poetry

Christopher V. Trinacty

Author Information

Christopher V. Trinacty is Assistant Professor of Classics at Oberlin College.

Senecan Tragedy and the Reception of Augustan Poetry

Christopher V. Trinacty

Reviews and Awards

"the fact remains that [Trinacty's] intertextual approach has yielded a book of great value to specialists in the fields of both Augustan poetry and Senecan tragedy." -- Gareth Williams , Language and Literature

"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." -- David Wray, University of Chicago

"Trinacty goes far beyond spotting echoes of Augustan poetry in Seneca's plays: he shows Seneca engaged in a two-way exchange with the Augustan poets, rereading and reshaping the earlier tradition to define his own independent project responsive to its own cultural and critical milieu. The reader will find here a fresh perspective on Senecan tragedy and its meaning for its audiences, and on Augustan poetry as it was received in the generations after Augustus." --James Ker, University of Pennsylvania

"Trinacty has a keen ear for verbal allusion, and his close readings are detailed and persuasive." -- The Classical Journal