Jonson's Textual Monument

Abstract

This essay explores how, in his Roman tragedy Sejanus, Ben Jonson adapts a Roman sense of monumentality to his own literary project in order to assuage the tension between his immortalizing ambitions and the transitory nature of the medium for which he writes. By reading Sejanus in the context of the growing Jacobean interest in and revision of Roman modes of monumentality, as well as in the context of Jonson's investment in his lasting legacy, I argue that the play provides a textual monument to his conception of his artistic identity.