Feminine voices of vengeance in Senecan tragedy and its reception

Thesis

This thesis argues that it is primarily through the revenge of female characters, and that of Medea in particular, that Seneca interrogates the boundary between proportionate and excessive revenge, and explores the problems inherent in like-for-like violence. It further argues that analysing Seneca’s tragedies from the angle of women’s revenge, and then examining some of the reverberations of this theme across the extraordinarily rich reception of Seneca in European drama, and particularly in France, can shed important light on a question that has long proved problematic for students of the tragedies, that is the nature of the relationship between Seneca’s plays and his philosophica.

The work contains fourteen chapters structured in three parts. Part I is an analytical survey of all the instances of female revenge across the corpus of eight genuine plays. Part II looks to Seneca’s treatise On Anger (De Ira) for insight into the parameters of revenge in the dramas. The Stoics considered anger, and passion in general, as a product of reason that is not functioning properly. As such, a revenge tragedy depicting an avenger applying rational principles in order to prepare, and then to enact, his or her revenge plan can be analysed in light of the Stoic belief that anger stems from reason. This part of the thesis focuses mainly on Medea and on the Furies, who occupied a prominent role in Stoic philosophical debates relating to the passions. Part III looks to the reception of Seneca in order to illuminate our understanding of the ‘Senecan question’. After giving an account of the reception of Seneca’s tragedies in European drama, I narrow my focus to two French tragedies in particular, the Médée of Jean de La Péruse (1553) and the Médée of Pierre Corneille (1634–5). By citing Médée’s revenge as an illustration of his own controversial stance on the end of tragedy, Corneille gives us an idea of what a Senecan statement in defence of his tragic poetics might have resembled.

Authors: Nelis, B

• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: Seneca; gender; reception; tragedy
• Subjects: Women; Revenge in literature; Poets, Latin, in literature; Tragedy