Seneca
Subtitle: Oedipus
By: Susanna Braund
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Published: 2015
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 176
ISBN-13: 9781474234795; 9781474234801; 9781474234818
Subjects: PERFORMING ARTS / Theater / General; PERFORMING ARTS / Theater / History & Criticism; LITERARY CRITICISM / Ancient & Classical
Description: "Oedipus,  king of Thebes, is one of the giant figures of ancient mythology.  Through the centuries, his story has inspired works of epic poetry,  lyric poetry, tragedy, opera, a gospel musical and more.  The myth has  been famously deployed in psychology by Sigmund Freud. It may not be too  bold to claim that Oedipus is the name from Greco-Roman mythology best  known beyond the academy at the present time, thanks to Freud's famous  phrase 'the Oedipus complex'. The most famous version of the Oedipus  myth from antiquity is the Greek play by Sophocles. But there is another  version, the Latin drama by the Roman philosopher and politician  Seneca.Seneca's version is an entirely different treatment from  that of Sophocles and reflects concerns special to the author and his  Roman audience in the first century AD. Moreover, the play actually  exercised a much greater influence on European literature and thought  than has usually been suspected. This book offers a compact and incisive  study of the multi-faceted Oedipus myth, of Seneca as dramatist, of the  distinctive characteristics of Seneca's play and of the most important  aspects of the reception of the play in European drama and culture. The  scope of the book ranges chronologically from Homer's treatment of  Oedipus myth in the Odyssey  down to a twenty-first century Senecan treatment by a Lebanese Canadian  dramatist. No knowledge of Latin or other foreign languages is required"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note:; title: Acknowledgments; title: Chapter One: The Myth; title: Chapter Two: Seneca in his Time; title: Chapter Three: Structure, Themes and Issues; title: Chapter Four: Reception and Influence of Seneca's Oedipus; title: Guide to Further Reading; title: Bibliography; title: Index.