ancient & classical drama and plays
Category=DD
drama literary criticism
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eq_biography-true-stories
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eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_poetry
medieval literary criticism
Product details
- ISBN 9780801849329
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 26 Jan 1995
- Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Are there no limits to human cruelty? Is there any divine justice? Do the gods even matter if they do not occupy themselves with rewarding virtue and punishing wickedness? Seneca's plays might be dismissed as bombastic and extravagant answers to such questions-if so much of human history were not "Senecan" in its absurdity, melodrama, and terror. Here is an honest artist confronting the irrationality and cruelty of his world-the Rome of Caligula, Claudius, and Nero-and his art reflects the stress of the encounter. The surprise, perhaps, is that Seneca's world is so like our own.
David R. Slavitt, poet, novelist, critic, and journalist, has published more than fifty books. His translations include the Metamorphoses of Ovid, The Fables of Avianus, the "Eclogues" and "Georgics" of Virgil, and Seneca: The Tragedies, Vols. 1 and 2, all available from Johns Hopkins.
