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The Medium and the Messenger in Seneca’s Phaedra, Thyestes, and Trojan Women

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Published/Copyright: January 14, 2023
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Abstract

The language of Seneca’s messenger speeches concentrates preceding patterns of imagery into grotesquely violent action. In three tragedies – Phaedra, Thyestes, and Trojan Women – the report of an anonymous messenger dominates an entire act. All three scenes describe gruesome deaths: the impalement of Hippolytus on a tree trunk in Phaedra, Atreus’ butchering of his nephews in Thyestes, and the slaughter of Astyanax and Polyxena in Trojan Women. In portraying violence, these messenger speeches repurpose language established in earlier scenes to realize and deform a dominant theme of each play: distorted sexuality, appetite, and moral dissolution.

Acknowledgements

This article is dedicated to the memory of my first Latin teacher, Lawrence Ryan (1955‒2020). I am grateful to Michael Fontaine, Daniel Gallagher, Charles McNelis, Marden Nichols, Josiah Osgood, Katharina Volk, and Gareth Williams for their help and encouragement.

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Published Online: 2023-01-14
Published in Print: 2023-01-12

© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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