Language and Desire in Seneca's Phaedra

Charles Segal

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780691610719, 9780691054728
• eBook ISBN: 9781400885763
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Drama
• Index: Literature

This close reading of Seneca's most influential tragedy explores the question of how poetic language produces the impression of an individual self, a full personality with a conscious and unconscious emotional life.

Originally published in 1986.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: Senecan Tragedy and the Drama of the Self
• 1. Language and the Unconscious: Towards a Rhetorical View of Character
• 2. Imagery and the Landscape of Desire
• 3. The Forest World
• 4. The Golden Age and Nature
• 5. Rivalry with the Father: Initiation and Failure
• 6. Parental Models: Ideal and Nightmare
• 7. Character Structure and Symbols of Power: Sword and Scepter
• 8. Desire, Silence, and the Speech of the Sword
• 9. Father, Underworld, and Retribution: Phaedra and Theseus
• 10. Seneca's Patricide and the Trace of Writing
• 11. Closure, Form, and the Father
• 12. Conclusion: Rhetoric and Reality
• Selected Bibliography
• Index