Seneca the Younger | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 23 pages of analysis & critique of Seneca the Younger.

Seneca the Younger | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 23 pages of analysis & critique of Seneca the Younger.
This section contains 6,662 words
(approx. 23 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Dana Gioia

SOURCE: "Seneca and European Tragedy" and "Seneca & the Idea of Lyric Tragedy," in The New Criterion, Vol. XII, Nos. 4 and 5, December, 1993 and January, 1994, pp. 16-25, pp. 29-38.

In the first section of the following two-part essay, Gioia analyzes Seneca's contribution to the formal aspects of Elizabethan drama, including the five-act structure, the introduction of essential secondary characters, and the presentation of the ghost figure. In the second part Gioia characterizes Seneca as "the creator of a new theatrical genrelyric tragedy. "

In 1543 Giambattista Giraldi Cinthio, the influential Italian playwright, critic, and writer of novelle (from whom Shakespeare borrowed the plots of Othello and Measure for Measure), judiciously summarized the Renaissance view of Seneca's dramas: "In almost all his tragedies he surpassed (in as far as I can judge) all the Greeks who ever wrote—in wisdom, in gravity, in decorum, in majesty, and in memorable aphorism."

Renaissance criticism...

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This section contains 6,662 words
(approx. 23 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Dana Gioia
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Critical Essay by Dana Gioia from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.