Medea: Transformations of a Greek Figure in Latin Literature

Manuwald, Gesine

doi:10.1017/s0017383512000290

Cited by 4 publications

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“…On the traceable parallels between Euripides' and Seneca's Medeas, seeCosta (1973) 8; Gill(1987); andLefèvre (1997a) Arcellaschi (1990). examines Medea's role in Roman drama, andManuwald (2013) presents a deft survey of the heroine's changing representation in Latin literature. Too little of Ovid's Medea survives for scholars to gauge its influence on Seneca's version.…”

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Seneca's Characters

Bexley

2022

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Seneca's Characters addresses one of the most enduring and least theorised elements of literature: fictional character and its relationship to actual, human selfhood. Where does the boundary between character and person lie? While the characters we encounter in texts are obviously not 'real' people, they still possess person-like qualities that stimulate our attention and engagement. How is this relationship formulated in contexts of theatrical performance, where characters are set in motion by actual people, actual bodies and voices? This book addresses such questions by focusing on issues of coherence, imitation, appearance and autonomous action. It argues for the plays' sophisticated treatment of character, their acknowledgement of its purely fictional ontology alongside deep – and often dark – appreciation of its quasi-human qualities. Seneca's Characters offers a fresh perspective on the playwright's powerful tragic aesthetics that will stimulate scholars and students alike.

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Seneca's Characters

Bexley

2022

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“…13.Upon which see Cowan (2010) and (2013); Manuwald (2011), 289, and (2015), 176–9. On Medea's transformation throughout Roman literature, see Manuwald (2013) and Corrigan (2013), as well as the collected Ramus volume 41 on ‘Roman Medea’, Boyle (2012); for her role in Ovid specifically, the treatment of Hinds (1993) is seminal.…”

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Medea's Sol-Ipsism: Language, Power and Identity in Seneca's Medea

Campbell¹

2019

Ramus

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Recent investigations of Seneca's Medea have found consistently fascinating the way in which Medea progressively flags her realization of enacted identity and selfhood. She self-consciously pierces the fabric of her drama with identifying declarations, colored by especial reference to her name: the announcement Medea superest (‘Medea remains’, 166) and bald statement of fiam (‘I will be’, 171) in response to hearing her own name lead to the supreme utterance of Medea nunc sum (‘now I am Medea’, 910). Medea conjures herself into being with these three identifications, stepping fully into the troubling contours she knows of not only her own mythology, but also her literary history. Medea's dominating focus on her name allows this layered acknowledgement of self, of Medea as both mythological figure and literary fixture. In resultant discussions, the weight given to her name in precipitating this sense of identity within her play has, quite naturally, led to a proportionate emphasis upon who Medea is. In some ways, Medea's notably self-annotative process of becoming ‘Medea’ eclipses other useful interrogative frameworks of her identity: the spotlight on the ‘who’ of Medea comes somewhat at the expense of the ‘what’, or the ‘how’. This is not to say that such categories are not mutually informative or intertwined, for Medea (by Seneca's time) does, in fact, have a defining act: the murder of her children. Who Medea is stems from what she does, the sentiment vividly expressed by Medea nunc sum. In light of these considerations, I would suggest a different perspective from which to conceptualize Medea's identity, one that takes into account the paired aspects of being and doing that together comprise an understanding of character, especially within drama. This perspective departs from a framework dependent on progressive structural characterization, as represented by the trio of passages cited above, and focuses instead on characterization via demonstrated patterns of linguistic tendency, on both macroscopic and microscopic levels. From the beginning, Medea displays measured consistency with her relentless knowledge of self as she transforms these categories of identification and action: as the play develops, her sense of ‘this is who I am’ becomes ‘this is what I do’.

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“… 15 On the traceable parallels between Euripides' and Seneca's Medeas see Costa (1973) 8; Gill (1987); and Lefèvre (1997). Arcellaschi (1990) examines Medea's role in Roman drama, and Manuwald (2013) presents a deft survey of the heroine's changing representation in Latin literature. Too little of Ovid's Medea survives for scholars to gauge its influence on Seneca's version.…”

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Recognition and the Character of Seneca's Medea

Bexley

2016

Camb. class. j.

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The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-pro t purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Versions of this paper were presented at the University of Edinburgh's Classics Seminar Series, and at the Cambridge Philological Society; lively discussion ensued on both occasions, and I am grateful for the responses I received. I would also like to thank the journal's anonymous reviewers whose suggestions have lead to me clarify and improve the structure of this complex argument. Lastly, thanks are due to Ioannis Ziogas, as always, for his perceptive comments and unstinting encouragement.

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Medea: Transformations of a Greek Figure in Latin Literature

Cited by 4 publications

References 5 publications

Seneca's Characters

Seneca's Characters

Medea's Sol-Ipsism: Language, Power and Identity in Seneca's Medea

Recognition and the Character of Seneca's Medea

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