An Appalachian Translation of Seneca's Oedipus
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Count Your Blessings You Can't See: An Appalachian Translation of Seneca's Oedipus Item Type text; Electronic Thesis Authors Main, Michael Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction, presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 25/09/2021 02:04:42 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/642031 COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS YOU CAN’T SEE: AN APPALACHIAN TRANSLATION OF SENECA’S OEDIPUS by Michael Main ____________________________ Copyright © Michael Main 2020 A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES AND CLASSICS In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS WITH A MAJOR IN CLASSICS In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2020 Main 1 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE As members of the Master’s Committee, we certify that we have read the thesis prepared by Michael Main, titled “Count Your Blessings You Can’t See: An Appalachian Translation of Seneca’s Oedipus” and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Master’s Degree. _________________________________________________________________ Date: ____________June 29, 2020 David Christenson _________________________________________________________________ Date: ____________June 29, 2020 Robert Groves _________________________________________________________________ Date: __June__________ 29, 2020 Philip Waddell Final approval and acceptance of this thesis is contingent upon the candidate’s submission of the final copies of the thesis to the Graduate College. I hereby certify that I have read this thesis prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the Master’s requirement. _________________________________________________________________ Date: ____________June 29, 2020 David Christenson Master’s Thesis Committee Chair Department of Religious Studies and Classics Main 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost I would like to thank Drs. David Christenson, Robert Groves, and Philip Waddell for serving on my committee and for being my advisors and mentors throughout my time at the University of Arizona. Special thanks to Miranda Lovett, Julia Paré, and Samantha Richter for bearing with me through all my incoherent rambling. I would also like to thank my friends back in Kentucky, without whom this project would have been impossible; I especially thank Annie Jo Baker, Jonathan Hall, Katie Kirk, Sofia Saderholm, Charles Vanderpool, Evan Williams, and Bradley Wright. Finally, I would like to thank my mother, Melanie, for her encouragement and helpful suggestions. This work was made possible in part by funding from the University of Arizona Department of Religious Studies and Classics, and from the College of Humanities Graduate Student Research Grants Program. Main 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT...............................................................................................................................5 INTRODUCTION: AN APPALACHIAN OEDIPUS ..............................................................6 Seneca the Younger and His Oedipus ...................................................................................6 American Incest Drama ........................................................................................................8 The Language and Cultural Image of Appalachia ............................................................. 11 Domesticating Seneca .......................................................................................................... 16 OEDIPUS 291-402: Manto’s Sacrifice .................................................................................... 21 DISCUSSION ...................................................................................................................... 26 OEDIPUS 530-658: Creon’s Necromantic Ekphrasis ............................................................ 31 DISCUSSION ...................................................................................................................... 35 OEDIPUS 882-1061 Oedipus’ Blindness and Jocasta’s Suicide ............................................ 41 DISCUSSION ...................................................................................................................... 47 EPILOGUE: THE FUTURE OF THE PROJECT ................................................................ 53 WORKS CITED...................................................................................................................... 56 Main 4 ABSTRACT This project consists primarily of translations of three scenes from Seneca’s Oedipus into Appalachian English, which refers to a number of varieties of English spoken in the Appalachian Mountains of the United States, ranging from southern New York to northern Mississippi. In my Introduction, I discuss the cultural and historical background of Seneca’s Oedipus and its parallels to American dramas that treat the topic of incest, especially the play’s emphasis on biological and social decay, gore, and the grotesque. I also explore challenges that arise when translating this play into an Appalachian context, including media portrayals of Appalachians, nuances of Appalachian English, and the methods and theories behind my translation. The main body of my thesis consists of translations of lines 291-402 (Manto’s extispicium), 530-658 (Creon’s description of Teiresias’ necromantic ritual), and 882-1061 (Oedipus’ self-blinding and Jocasta’s suicide), each with facing Latin text and a discussion of my choices for each passage. I conclude that the ultimate goal of this work is to link Senecan drama to the American theatrical tradition, while also demonstrating the artistic and pedagogical merit and viability of regionalized translations. Main 5 INTRODUCTION: AN APPALACHIAN OEDIPUS Seneca the Younger and His Oedipus Lucius Annaeus Seneca was born ca. 1 BCE in what is now Cordoba, Spain. He was brought to Rome at an early age and educated in rhetoric and philosophy; he was particularly influenced as a philosopher by the Stoic Attalus and the Sextian Sotion (Wilson 2014: 51-6). Seneca’s Stoic philosophy is a constant thread woven through his body of tragic work. The tragedies often demonstrate principles of Stoicism by presenting and exploring a decidedly non- Stoic world (Boyle 2006: 192). Stoicism in the tragedies is never straightforward—catastrophe and moral failings frequently arise from a failure or corruption of Stoic values (Star 2006: 219- 21).1 Stoic notions of determinism, emotional control, moderation, and moral consistency are present throughout the tragedies but are often twisted and corrupted by the protagonists. Growing up in Rome, Seneca was wracked with chronic illness, probably pulmonary tuberculosis, which plagued him until his death in 65 CE (Wilson 2014: 57). His illness had a strong impact on his worldview and his writing. As a young man he frequently contemplated suicide because of his condition. The fear and uncertainty that surrounded his health pervade his work, especially the tragedies. Nebulous dread and shifting anxieties manifest throughout his corpus, a constant theme in his numerous writings on death (Wilson 2014: 58-9). In his tragedies Seneca is deeply concerned with the failure of the body and its constituent parts, as evidenced by the grotesque body horror of his Oedipus and Thyestes, for example. 1 Seneca’s own death, as Tacitus represents it, reads almost like a tragic failure of Stoic constantia. Faced with forced suicide at the order of Nero, Seneca urged dignity and solemnity as he cut the veins in his arms. His resolve, however, eventually gave way to desperation when both bleeding and hemlock failed to kill him. He finally suffocated himself in the steam of his bath (Ann. 15.63-4). The quiet dignity that Seneca espoused in his life collapsed in personally tragic circumstances, in a near parody of his modus operandi as a tragedian. Main 6 Based on the stylistic variation of his tragedies, Seneca likely wrote them over a number of years, extending from Caligula’s reign to the year of his death (Wilson 2014: 96). Though its precise date is unknown, Oedipus is generally considered to be one of his earlier works (Boyle 2011: xviii-xix). Seneca’s tragedies are deeply visceral and macabre; as Wilson puts it, “it is easy to see that Seneca’s tragedies are dramatic meditations on cruelty, pollution, and disgust, on horrific extremes of behavior … and on spectacle” (2014: 157). His Oedipus is no exception. It is much more gruesome and horrific than its Greek model, Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannos. Seneca departs frequently from the narrative of his predecessor by inserting new, gory episodes and subverting previously established characterizations to create a grotesque new tragedy (Boyle 2011: lv). Reflecting Seneca’s philosophical milieu, Oedipus is concerned with themes of identity, natural order, the fracturing of family units, and political security. Seneca explores these themes through motifs of gore and decay, comparing the fragile body politic of Thebes with compromised biological systems. I have chosen to translate three episodes from Oedipus which exemplify these images and themes: Manto’s and Teiresias’ extispicium (291-402), Creon’s ekphrastic Messenger Speech describing Teiresias’ necromancy