Recognition and the Character of Seneca's Medea

This article explores the phenomenon of the monstrous in Seneca's Medea by focusing on the emotions of its main character, in particular demonstrating that they are not merely an expression of Medea's inner psychological sphere but are intrinsically connected with her existential search for recognition in her surrounding world, a world especially marked by its social, cosmic, and mythical dimensions. The monstrous nature of Medea's emotions should be understood in the light of the wider phenomenon of the monstrous in this play, where it is a pervasive phenomenon, in the sense that it transcends the emotions of the main character and is present throughout the play as a tragic, mythically encoded enactment of the dissolution of social, religious, and cosmic boundaries. Other manifestations of the monstrous will be referred to in passing.

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Oedipus Haerens: Paranoid Lagging in Seneca’s Phoenissae

Graf

2024

Classical Antiquity

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This paper is an attempt to think through paranoia’s epistemic and affective features, which pervade both the worldview presented in Senecan tragedy and the inner life of many of its protagonists. Drawing upon recent literary-critical work, I argue that paranoia is temporally and epistemically ambivalent: subjects simultaneously attempt to “get ahead” of a looming cataclysm—looking to the future in an attempt to avert disaster—while inevitably “falling behind,” failing to predict or preempt the future in time to protect themselves. Much of Senecan tragedy plays out paranoia’s future-oriented vigilance on the formal level. Foreshadowing, allusions, and meta-literary flourishes serve to render both readers and characters hyperaware of the earth-shattering horrors to come; however, in doing so, they also reveal that this forward-oriented bracing only serves to dredge up negative affect in advance. By contrast, I argue that Seneca’s Phoenissae thematizes in the character of Oedipus not only paranoia’s future-looking vigilance but also its inherent lagging, the failure to know and act in advance. These elements of slowness, stuckness, and delay open a space for stillness, relief, and intimacy, even within a narrative which hurtles toward cataclysm.

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Recognition and the Character of Seneca's Medea

Cited by 3 publications

References 35 publications

Virgil in English Translation

Virgil in English Translation

MONSTROUS EMOTIONS IN SENECA'S MEDEA

Oedipus Haerens: Paranoid Lagging in Seneca’s Phoenissae

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