By Christopher V. Trinacty
Of their perform of aemulatio, the mimicry of older versions of writing, the Augustan poets frequently seemed to the Greeks: Horace drew thought from the lyric poets, Virgil from Homer, and Ovid from Hesiod, Callimachus, and others. yet by the point of the nice Roman tragedian Seneca, the Augustan poets had supplanted the Greeks because the "classics" to which Seneca and his contemporaries referred. certainly, Augustan poetry is a reservoir of language, motif, and notion for Seneca's writing. surprisingly, although, there has now not but been a finished learn revealing the connection among Seneca and his Augustan predecessors. Christopher Trinacty's Senecan Tragedy and the Reception of Augustan Poetry is the long-awaited solution to the decision for one of these research.
Senecan Tragedy and the Reception of Augustan Poetry uniquely areas Senecan tragedy in its Roman literary context, delivering an additional measurement to the motivations and which means at the back of Seneca's writings. through interpreting Senecan tragedy via an intertextual lens, Trinacty unearths Seneca's wisdom of his old second, during which the Augustan interval used to be eroding gradually round him. Seneca, in retrospect to the poetry of Horace, Virgil, and Ovid, acts as a severe interpreter of either their paintings and their period. He deconstructs the language of the Augustan poets, refiguring it throughout the viewpoint of his tragic protagonists. In doing so, he positions himself as a critic of the Augustan culture and divulges a poetic voice that frequently subverts the classical ethos of that culture. via this strategy of reappropriation Seneca finds a lot approximately himself as a playwright and as a guy: within the creative demeanour during which he re-employs the Augustan poets' language, concept, and poetics in the tragic framework, Seneca supplies his version works new--and uniquely Senecan--life.
Trinacty's research sheds new mild either on Seneca and on his Augustan predecessors. As such, Senecan Tragedy and the Reception of Augustan Poetry delivers to be a groundbreaking contribution to the learn of either Senecan tragedy and Augustan poetry.