???

[quinara]

Why on earth would you decide to write a book on Senecan tragedy when you're going to close your second chapter with this -

The greatest need in the criticism of this drama is to understand its legitimacy as drama of a new kind in the ancient tradition. It cannot be explained as an inferior imitation of Greek tragedy because, though inferior, it is not imitative in the strict sense of the word and has its own nature and motivation.

I'm talking to you, Norman T. Pratt (author of Seneca's Drama in 1982). How bored were you that you didn't write about a subject you thought actually had merit? Seriously. You twerp.

Comments

well...

[klytaimnestra]

I think everyone who works on Seneca drama thinks this way. It's, um, let me think. Seneca was in some ways inventing a new genre, based on the old genre which was superior because fully-developed. But Seneca was doing something different, which hadn't had the chance to get fully developed yet. So it was inferior, because it wasn't in full bloom yet. But it was still worth thinking about, because he's genuinely trying to do something new, different, and cool - and succeeding.

Trying to think of an example. If we hadn't had the old Star Trek - the original series - we wouldn't have had, oh, Joss Whedon shows, for one example. But the original series of Star Trek was, to be perfectly honest, lame, hackneyed, and cheesy. And the acting was pretty pitiful. Meanwhile there were earlier genres, oh, say Humphrey Bogart movies, that were much better written and produced and such than Star Trek. But Star Trek is still worth writing and talking about because although lame, cheesy, and badly acted, it was trying to do something different, and largely succeeded, and sparked a whole lot more much better work.

Now I should say I haven't read any Seneca in Latin and only 1 play in English. And that my particular research focus is Greek Tragedy, so I'm entirely on board with the idea that Seneca is inferior. But that doesn't mean he isn't worth writing and talking about; because he was trying to do something different, and it was a worthwhile thing to do.

Re: well...

[quinara]

I suppose my problem is that I don't think subjective value judgements (of any kind) should have this prominent a place in academic study. I don't see the point, especially when there are next to no technical aspects you can begin to objectively comment on. It seems to be working from the assumption that Attic tragedy is 'good' and deviations from that necessarily bring badness (because how was he going to be able to write something with a stature even approaching a genre that had been relatively set in stone for five hundred years?), and frankly I don't think anyone can get anywhere very interesting if you start from that assumption.

I mean, I certainly don't think that everyone working on Seneca thinks this way - there's a lot of interest in the deeper psychological/philosophical questions Seneca seems to ask and I'm sure some people must prefer the increased immediacy of the violence, not to mention the abrupt, chorus-less endings. It's only recently stopped being fashionable to think all Silver Latin is rubbish (and a lot of people still think that way), so it's kind of annoying reading people who sound like they're martyring themselves with it for the Classics cause.

Re: well...

[klytaimnestra]

Fair enough. In fact I don't think my colleague who works on Senecan tragedy thinks it's inferior at all; he thinks it's different.

You're right about not starting from a point of "well this stuff basically sucks" because you will then never get anything out of it; I should have said that. I have always tended to distinguish between critics who basically like the text they're looking at and want to tell you why it's so cool, and critics who despise it and want to show how much smarter they are than the writer. I have always avoided books / articles by the latter; they never have anything useful in them. And assuming defect or authorial weakness in any text that has lasted 2000 years, or even 200, usually shows that you've missed something important and it is the critic, not the author, that is the fool.

On thinking over that comment, by the critic you're reading, is it possible that he's being apologetic? He was writing in 1982, when many/most critics were still treating Silver Latin as rubbish; perhaps he felt that he had to apologize for writing a whole book on Seneca that didn't, you know, rubbish the whole corpus? "Even if it is inferior there are still things worth seeing in it" sort of thing - when the "inferiority" is not his opinion, but the opinion he is perhaps correctly assuming in his intended audience?

Re: well...

[quinara]

he thinks it's different

I think that's where I am too. If you gave me a choice I'd probably see a production of Aeschylus' Agamemnon over Seneca's, but it wouldn't be because I think Seneca's is "worse". I mean, I'm working on his Medea the moment and in some ways it's much more interesting to study than Euripides', but does that make it better? I'm not sure.

I suppose his tone could be apologetic, but it seems a rather obtuse way for him to give himself an out. Why apologise to those people who are going to rubbish you for even bothering to write a book on a subject? There was definitely another audience to be had; I've read several pieces published around the same time on Neronian literature.