Plautus was the single greatest influence on Western comedy. Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors and Moliere's The Miser are two subsequent classics directly based on Plautine originals. Plautus himself bo ... 続きを読む
Laughing Awry offers a comprehensive overview of key themes in the interpretation of the plays of Plautus, and explores the connections between deception, desire, slavery, genre, and audience. In doin ... 続きを読む
When we are confronted with a work of art, what is its effect on us? In contrast to post-Enlightenment conceptions, which tend to restrict themselves to aesthetic or discursive responses, the ancient ... 続きを読む
The Octavia is the only surviving historical drama from ancient Rome. With a plot rich in sex, dynastic intrigue, riots, and murder, the play's characters include the philosopher Seneca, the emperor N ... 続きを読む
As both a literary genre and a view of life, tragedy has from the very beginning spurred a dialogue between poetry and philosophy. Plato famously banned tragedians from his ideal community because he ... 続きを読む
The tragic myth of Agamemnon, Mycenae's 'king of kings', who sacrificed his own daughter in order to sack the great city of Troy and returned home only to be assassinated by his wife and her lover, ha ... 続きを読む
The myth of the sorceress Medea, who, abandoned by her Argonaut husband Jason, killed their children in revenge, has exerted a continuous impact on European writers and artists from classical Greece t ... 続きを読む
Seneca's Oedipus is a work of exceptional historical and dramatic interest. It is the only surviving ancient Roman play on one of the most important and enduring myths of European intellectual histor ... 続きを読む
In their practice of aemulatio, the mimicry of older models of writing, the Augustan poets often looked to the Greeks: Horace drew inspiration from the lyric poets, Virgil from Homer, and Ovid from He ... 続きを読む
Phaedra * Oedipus * Medea * Trojan Women * Hercules Furens * Thyestes
Seneca's plays are the product of a sensational, frightening, and oppressive period of history. Tutor to the emperor ... 続きを読む