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    Work of Julius Caesar Scaliger

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    Senecan tragedy refers to ten plays written in the 1st century AD, chiefly by Roman philosopher Seneca. Rediscovered in the Renaissance, they became models for reviving tragedy on the stage. While reworkings of Greek plays, Seneca's versions differed in their graphic violence, moralizing, and rhetoric over action. Both French Neoclassical and Elizabethan dramatists drew inspiration from Seneca, with the latter attracted to his themes of gory revenge in plays like The Spanish Tragedy and Hamlet.

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    Work of Julius Caesar Scaliger

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    189 views1 page
    Senecan tragedy refers to ten plays written in the 1st century AD, chiefly by Roman philosopher Seneca. Rediscovered in the Renaissance, they became models for reviving tragedy on the stage. While reworkings of Greek plays, Seneca's versions differed in their graphic violence, moralizing, and rhetoric over action. Both French Neoclassical and Elizabethan dramatists drew inspiration from Seneca, with the latter attracted to his themes of gory revenge in plays like The Spanish Tragedy and Hamlet.

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    Senecan tragedy refers to ten plays written in the 1st century AD, chiefly by Roman philosopher Seneca. Rediscovered in the Renaissance, they became models for reviving tragedy on the stage. While reworkings of Greek plays, Seneca's versions differed in their graphic violence, moralizing, and rhetoric over action. Both French Neoclassical and Elizabethan dramatists drew inspiration from Seneca, with the latter attracted to his themes of gory revenge in plays like The Spanish Tragedy and Hamlet.

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    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    189 views1 page

    Work of Julius Caesar Scaliger

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    api-27192458
    Senecan tragedy refers to ten plays written in the 1st century AD, chiefly by Roman philosopher Seneca. Rediscovered in the Renaissance, they became models for reviving tragedy on the stage. While reworkings of Greek plays, Seneca's versions differed in their graphic violence, moralizing, and rhetoric over action. Both French Neoclassical and Elizabethan dramatists drew inspiration from Seneca, with the latter attracted to his themes of gory revenge in plays like The Spanish Tragedy and Hamlet.

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    Senecan tragedy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Senecan_tragedy&p...

    Senecan tragedy
    From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    Senecan tragedy is a body of ten 1st century (A. D.) dramas, of


    which eight were written by the Roman Stoic philosopher and
    politician L. Annaeus Seneca (Seneca the Younger). Rediscovered
    by Italian humanists in the mid-16th century, they became the
    models for the revival of tragedy on the Renaissance stage. The two
    great, but very different, dramatic traditions of the age - French
    Neoclassical tragedy and Elizabethan tragedy - both drew
    inspiration from Seneca.

    Seneca's plays were reworkings chiefly of Euripides' dramas and


    also of works of Aeschylus and Sophocles. Probably meant to be
    recited at elite gatherings, they differ from their originals in their
    long declamatory, narrative accounts of action, their obtrusive Ancient bust of Seneca
    (Antikensammlung Berlin)
    moralizing, and their bombastic rhetoric. They dwell on detailed
    accounts of horrible deeds and contain long reflective soliloquies.
    Though the gods rarely appear in these plays, ghosts and witches abound. In an age when the Greek
    originals were scarcely known, Seneca's plays were mistaken for high Classical drama. Senecan
    tragedies tended to include ideas of revenge, the occult, the supernatural, suicide, blood and gore.
    The Renaissance scholar Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484-1558), who knew both Latin and Greek,
    preferred Seneca to Euripides.

    French Neoclassical dramatic tradition, which reached its highest expression in the 17th-century
    tragedies of Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine, drew on Seneca for form and grandeur of style. These
    Neoclassicists adopted Seneca's innovation of the confidant (usually a servant), his substitution of
    speech for action, and his moral hairsplitting.

    The Elizabethan dramatists found Seneca's themes of bloodthirsty revenge more congenial to English
    taste than they did his form. The first English tragedy, Gorboduc (1561), by Thomas Sackville and
    Thomas Norton, is a chain of slaughter and revenge written in direct imitation of Seneca. (As it
    happens, Gorboduc does follow the form as well as the subject matter of Senecan tragedy: but only a
    very few other English plays - e.g. The Misfortunes of Arthur - followed its lead in this.) Senecan
    influence is also evident in Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy and Shakespeare's Hamlet: both
    share a revenge theme, a corpse-strewn climax, and ghosts among the cast, which can all be traced
    back to the Senecan model.

    This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now
    in the public domain.

    Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senecan_tragedy"


    Categories: Drama
    Hidden category: Articles needing additional references from July 2008

    This page was last modified on 30 October 2008, at 20:31.


    All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See

    1 of 2 11/19/08 2:26 PM

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