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 (530-658), and the retribution that Oedipus and Jocasta inflict upon themselves at the end of the play (882-1040). These scenes demonstrate the ways in which Seneca’s Oedipus connects sexual perversion, biological decay, and the breakdown of the body politic: organic matter and social structure decompose and fragment simultaneously. When translating these scenes into English, I desired to retain Seneca’s themes while reframing the narrative within the American dramatic tradition. The thematic resonances of the play are such that, when translated into English, Oedipus readily mirrors a subcategory of American domestic dramas that treat incest.

Main 7

American Incest Drama

Incest has become a mainstay in American drama and film. Such playwrights as Lillian

Hellman, Gertrude Stein, Djuna Barnes, Lanford Wilson, and Tracy Letts have brought the theme of incest to the forefront of domestic tragedy, where it has often reflected American attitudes towards nationalism, as well as domestic, economic, and international anxieties. Over decades, incest has slid in and out of the national consciousness and been used as a convenient, attention-grabbing talking point in times of political and economic strife (Harkins 2009: xvi- xviii). Incest has often been invoked when discussing policies regarding the family unit in

America, such as interracial marriage and homosexuality. Legal definitions of incest have always been a facet of defining the American family (Harkins 2009: 26-68). If the American family unit is held up as a microcosm of the state, then whenever one is threatened with instability, so too is the other. Likewise, the royal family in Oedipus serves as a metaphor for the state of the city—as the hidden incest festers and corrupts Oedipus’ domus, the city becomes more unstable. In

America anxieties surrounding the overall state of the country have resulted in a rich body of literature that deals with incest as a leitmotif representing destabilization and entropy.

Just as Oedipus’ and Jocasta’s incestuous marriage results in the biological decay evident in Manto’s extispicium, American incest literature frequently deploys grotesque images of the body as reflections of human sexuality. In Djuna Barnes’ 1918 drama Passion Play all pleasurable things derive from a world of death and rot:

The world has two things—good and evil. The one passes through the city as the deer through the forest and people pay tribute to it, lawyers grow callouses on their heels over it; preachers lose the tips of the tongues exalting it—for it is pleasant and to the nose very gratifying, for it hath no odor. Thus it passes, smiling and in favor—‘til puff [snaps his fingers], suddenly some one cries, “Carrion!” The world is suffused with the smell of flesh and sweat and the hot nausea of things that have died with fur on them, and things that have died naked and in gestures. And the lover with his nose in his mistress’ throat,

Main 8

and the steer with his nostrils among the wrinkled bristles of his mate—perceive that there is an aroma in the air; a foul and penetrating stench; a thing that makes the breasts of woman bound, the tongues of men shed saliva and the mouths of those but lately smiling, draw in fear. We, my dears, are that stench. (54-5)

Deteriorating biological systems are the main framework from which Barnes constructs her depictions of sex; human sexuality is a festering carcass, with pleasure and decay inextricable from one another.2 Barnes, herself a victim of sexual abuse by her father and brothers (Cotsell

2005: 119), deals with the topic of incest as grotesquely as she does any other form of sexuality.

Like much of her work, Barnes’ 1958 play Antiphon contains a number of autobiographical references to her own childhood trauma (Parsons 2003: 86-9). The character Miranda confronts her mother Augusta for turning a blind eye to how her father forcibly arranged her first sexual encounter: “Miranda damned, with instep up-side-down, / Dragging rape-blood behind her, like the snail—” (185). The abuse continues through Miranda’s childhood, and she presents this revelation to her mother in increasingly grotesque and uncomfortable language (193-5), until

Augusta finally beats her to death for trying to break apart their family. The breakdowns of the human body and of the household stem from incestuous abuse, until both collapse like the very house in which the play takes place. The city-state of Thebes is likewise threatened with destruction as its royal house nears an asymptote of collapse and is only saved by Oedipus’ self- blinding and exile.

The domestic space takes on a sinister role in this genre. There is often an attempt to preserve the household when incest is discovered, with as little damage as possible to the family

2 This is reminiscent of Bakhtin’s seminal work on grotesque bodies. When the human body is represented in grotesque ways, there are two bodies manifest in the text: the literal human body under scrutiny, and a deformed double whose exaggerated appearance reflects the traumas and anxieties of its literal human source. Like Barnes’ carcass, the grotesquerie of the double body often centers around fluids, putrescence, and sexuality (Bakhtin 1968: 317-18). Main 9 unit or the community as a whole. In Tracy Letts’ 2009 August: Osage County, Ivy and Charles knowingly engage in an incestuous relationship, under the impression that they are cousins, when in fact they are half-siblings (83-4). When Ivy’s sister Barbara learns the full truth of their relationship, she attempts to keep it from them in order to keep the uneasy peace of the family.

Near the end of the play, however, Ivy’s mother unwittingly tells her that she’s sleeping with her brother. Enraged, Ivy forsakes the family home, with no intention of leaving Charles or telling him this devastating news: “I won’t let you change my story! … We’ll go away. We’ll still go away, and you will never see me again” (99). Ivy feels the need to preserve the status quo of her relationship with Charles, even at the expense of her relationship with the greater household. But even if the threat of sexual misconduct is mitigated, ignored, or escaped, domesticity remains an uneasy concept. In Gertrude Stein’s 1922 short play What Happened, the domestic respite from the daunting childhood threat of sexuality (Cotsell 2005: 113) which Stein finds with her partner

Alice Toklas is ominous and tense:

“Not any nuisance is depressing … Silence is in blessing and chasing and coincidences being ripe. A simple melancholy clearly precious and on the surface and surrounded and mixed strangely … A silence a whole waste of a dessert spoon, a whole waste of any little shaving, a whole waste altogether open” (419).

For Stein, a full recovery from this trauma is impossible. Any domestic space in which she finds herself is affected by the specter of incest and sexual abuse, which renders intimacy and domesticity uncertain and vaguely threatening. So it is in Seneca’s Oedipus—even after Oedipus accepts punishment for his crimes and leaves Thebes, the city will still be plagued by calamity and war.

Many of these plays about incest and sexual violence focus on characters who live in economically poor areas and speak marginalized dialects of English. Eugene O’Neill’s Desire

Main 10

Under the Elms, for example, is written in the rural vernacular of 1800s New England.3 More recently, August: Osage County and Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s Saturday Night at the Pahala

Theater use marginalized registers of communication from Oklahoma and Hawai‘i, respectively.

To reflect this practice of American dramatists, I have translated Seneca’s Oedipus into

Appalachian English, which is widely belittled and misunderstood by those who live outside

Appalachia.

The Language and Cultural Image of Appalachia

While Appalachian English shares common features with dialects spoken in other parts of the American South and Midwest, it is unique and distinctive as a dialect, and may be difficult for those raised outside of the mountains to understand. In his 1990 study Luhman identifies eight primary phonological features of Appalachian English that distinguish it from “Standard”

American English (after Wolfram and Christian’s work in the 1970s): glide reduction, unstressed terminal -ing, consonant cluster simplification, deletion of unstressed syllables, deletion of initial

[ð], substitution of [ɑ] for [au], substitution of [ɪ] for [ɛ], and rising pitch in declarative sentences

(334-5). The myth of Appalachian isolation has resulted in a widespread belief that the English of the region is more archaic, and closely related to the language of Shakespeare (Montgomery

2000: 21-3). Linguistic analysis, however, has shown this claim to be false, despite the dialect’s heavy influence from the Scotch-Irish immigrants who colonized the area in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Appalachian English is not frozen in time, but evolves similarly to other regional dialects of English (Wolfram and Christian 1976: 1-6).

3 O’Neill was among the first playwrights to write in vernacular English, which has come in and out of fashion over the last hundred years of dramatic writing. Main 11

Appalachia extends over a thousand miles from southern New York to northern

Mississippi, and contains four hundred and twenty counties in thirteen states (Appalachian

Regional Commission 2020). Given the region’s breadth and diversity, it is somewhat misleading to speak of Appalachian English as a single, universal dialect. Rather, there is a variety of Englishes spoken in different parts of the region (Cramer 2018: 46).4 Pittsburgh residents do not talk like North Carolinians, who in turn do not speak like natives of Alabama.

This translation focuses on the language of central Appalachia—namely eastern Kentucky, southern Ohio, and West Virginia. I chose this particular part of Appalachia due to my familial roots in the area, but it is my hope that the translation will resonate with readers and audiences across the Appalachian Mountains, as I have explored experiences and addressed stereotypes that are likely familiar to Appalachians throughout the region.

Appalachia remains egregiously misunderstood by those who live outside the mountains.

Due to the (falsely) perceived geographical insularity of Appalachia, a number of negative stereotypes about Appalachian people exist. These stereotypes have been in play for over two hundred years and have received a great deal of scholarly attention in the last thirty years

(Massey 2007: 124-7). The “isolated” hillbilly of myth is lazy and ignorant, and given to addiction—alcoholism has long been a popular stereotype, and in recent years the opioid epidemic in Appalachia has created new stereotypes of “hillbilly heroin,” which has had a measurably negative impact on the region’s ability to respond to the crisis (Kobak 2012: 206).

Appalachians are frequently represented as sexually deviant and aggressive, and associated heavily with rape, bestiality, and inbreeding (Massey 1988: 130-3).

4 I refer to the dialect in which I write broadly as Appalachian English for the sake of simplicity. Main 12

The “inbred hillbilly” trope is common in visual media, but is especially prevalent in horror films. Hicksploitation movies—films that negatively depict rural Americans as grotesquely different from the greater American culture, whether for comedic or horrific effect

(Harkins 2015: 448)—have contributed to harmful stereotypes about Appalachia for decades.

While it is true that hicksploitation need not necessarily concern itself with Appalachia—The

Hills Have Eyes and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, for instance, fall under the hicksploitation genre, despite taking place in the western United States—a number of iconic and influential films of this genre have been set in the mountains of Appalachia.

The 1972 film Deliverance, adapted by James Dickey from his 1970 novel of the same name, has exerted much influence on popular perceptions of Appalachians. Although the negative stereotypes of Appalachians in Deliverance predate its writing, the film’s role in solidifying those stereotypes in the American consciousness cannot be overstated. The film presents the denizens of northern Georgia as isolated and inbred, to the extent that they are almost completely dehumanized (Portelli 1988: 37-8). These characters are sexually violent and sadistic, delighting in the corruption of social norms and in profaning the “civilized.” Phrases like “bet you can squeal like a pig,” “got a real pretty [pronounced “purtty” after the patois of the character] mouth,” and “paddle faster, I hear banjos”5 have permeated pop culture, reinforcing over time the essentializing belief that Appalachians are inherently backwards and violent. The legacy of Deliverance has caused lasting, tangible damage in particular to Rabun County, GA, where the majority of filming took place. In the decades since the film’s release, tourism has made up a massive portion of the local economy, resulting in overdevelopment and negative

5 This last is not a line from the film or the novel, but is inspired by protagonists’ journey downriver following the infamous rape scene. Main 13 environmental impact in the area surrounding the Chattooga River (Silver 2007: 371), despite the economic growth tourism has brought to the community. Local actors were hired specifically for their archetypal physical appearances and paid very little. Billy Redden, who played the iconic

“Dueling Banjos” player Lonnie, was paid only $500 for his role and still lives as a minimum wage worker in Rabun County (York and Rubin 2018).

Following the tremendous commercial and critical success of Deliverance, the caricature of the violent, backwards, and inbred hillbilly has continued to pervade media, which represents

Appalachia as “other” in the American consciousness. These range in severity depending on genre and intention. The Simpsons characters Cletus and Brandine Spuckler represent an amalgam of Appalachian stereotypes played for laughs, in the tradition of The Beverly

Hillbillies. Their speech is highly reminiscent of Appalachian English (though they do occasionally exhibit dialectical features more associated with the Deep South).6 Their marriage is ambiguously incestuous and has produced dozens of children, several of whom present with visible birth defects. Cletus and Brandine are continually juxtaposed against the rest of

Springfield’s residents as other in their ignorance, licentiousness, and cultural isolation (Henry

2012: 154-64).

These same extremes of stereotyping appear in contemporary horror as well. The 2005 horror film The Descent and its 2009 sequel The Descent Part 2 center around a subterranean race of creatures living under the mountains of North Carolina. These bat-like “Crawlers” are a hideous extreme of Appalachian stereotyping: specifically designed to look inbred (Jones 2008), they are so thoroughly isolated that they have evolved into something entirely nonhuman. They

6 This indicates a conflation of Appalachian English with Southern American English, which is a common assumption, despite the fact that the two are distinct from one another. Main 14 are exceedingly violent and prey on those who enter their territory from outside Appalachia; though it is implied that they kill indiscriminately, they are only directly depicted as killing women in order to consume their flesh. Here, these secluded, inbred monstrosities stand in for

Appalachians in a horrific spectacle that plays on preconceived stereotypes about the region.

These extremes of hicksploitation are not restricted to fiction—reality series like Here Comes

Honey Boo Boo and Buckwild present Appalachians as objects of ridicule and spectacle, and have been criticized for their presentation of the region on national television (Gabriel 2013).

These are only a few examples of the ways in which media affects broader perceptions of

Appalachian people. The purpose of this translation is not to feed into the stereotypes that hicksploitation reinforces. In the films I have discussed above, isolationism and incest are celebrated aspects of the characters’ way of life. Whereas Appalachians in media like The X-

Files or the Wrong Turn series revel in their incestuous relationships, the characters of Seneca’s

Oedipus are distressed and revolted by the exposure of incest within their community. In this way, the Appalachian Oedipus rejects the stereotypes of the sexually perverse hillbilly. The notion of Appalachian isolation is also challenged. Influences external to Thebes are seen throughout the play. Creon brings news from Delphi to Oedipus, who believes himself to be

Corinthian; an old Corinthian man arrives to tell Oedipus of his adopted father’s death, which results in the exposure of Oedipus’ Theban origins and incestuous marriage. At first glance, these influences may appear disruptive to the status quo of the Theban court, but in fact restore order to the state. Communication between Theban and foreign entities facilitates the revelation of

Oedipus’ identity, which in turn provides the community an opportunity to heal in his absence.

Domesticating Seneca’s Oedipus into an Appalachian context thus allows the reader to reevaluate stereotypes of rural America through reception of ancient literature.

Main 15

Domesticating Seneca

There is a tendency in translation theory to view translations as lying somewhere on a spectrum of literalness, between extremely close, word-for-word translations and those that favor a more paraphrastic approach (Nida 1964: 141-2). My translation tends to be quite “loose,” as my main goal7 here is not to perfectly translate every word of Seneca’s Latin literally into

English. The verbum pro verbo, “grammar translation” approach is unsuited to the goals of this project, and, indeed, extraordinarily difficult to accomplish when translating any piece of poetry

(Nida 1964: 146). My focus is instead on translating the story—its structure, themes, and motifs—into a new cultural context.

This approach, which Nida called “dynamic equivalence” (Nida 1964: 143-4), places less emphasis on grammatical and lexical form and more on the communication of sense, which invites comparison of literary and thematic ideas rather than analysis of linguistic structures. verbum pro verbo rendering rarely produces comprehensible and compelling translations. That said, an understanding of the linguistic forms is necessary to arrive at the sense that one wishes to translate. As Seleskovitch puts it in her rejection of truly literal translation:

Sense is not to be confused with language meanings although it can be reached through language only. It is beyond language but has to be reached through language just as, to reach your dining room, you have to go through your house door and your house door is not your dining room; to reach sense, you have to go through language but language meanings are not sense. (1987: 444)

7 It is important to note that there is no golden ratio of loose and literal translation, nor of domestication and foreignization. My methods of translation were developed specifically for this project and would be unsuited for many others. This follows Vermeer’s skopos theory of translation, which holds that all translations have distinct goals and purposes, and may be considered unique pieces of literature in and of themselves in the target language (Vermeer 1989: 191-2). Each translation must take different approaches in accordance with its goals and artistic milieu (Vermeer 1989: 193)—there is no “all-purpose explanation” of the act of translation (Briggs 2017: 365). Main 16

The conversion of forms, or “formal equivalence,” is necessary even when composing a sense- for-sense translation. Although I translate loosely throughout, at the core of the translation is an understanding and conversion of Seneca’s grammatical and lexical forms into corresponding

English.

Loosely translating Seneca’s Oedipus into Appalachian English follows the “cultural turn” that translation studies adopted in the 1980s (Bassnett and Lefevere 1990: 4). Seneca’s cultural milieu cannot be framed as equivalent to that of 21st century Appalachia. The physical and temporal distance between the two cultures is such that although a formally literal translation is possible, the receptors cannot have the same reactions to, and understanding of, the text as an ancient audience. Rather than attempt to replicate the emotional reactions of a hypothetical ancient receptor through literal translation, my translation is meant to filter those reactions through a lens of contemporary American culture, which requires changing some of those reactions in the process. To that end, the precise denotation of words falls secondary to the translation of story, emotion, and culture, in a focused application of Nida’s theory of dynamic equivalence.

I have elected to translate in prose rather than attempt to replicate Seneca’s verse, which varies throughout the play (Boyle 2011: cxvii-cxxii). I made this decision with a mind toward simplicity and naturalism. I felt that mirroring Seneca’s poetry would appear awkward and that writing consistently in any one meter would sound unnatural and artificial to American listeners.

Rather than force Seneca’s poetic sensibilities onto English, I hope that this translation highlights and taps into Appalachia’s own rich poetic tradition by taking cues from poets like Qwo-Li

Driskill, Melissa Range, and Nancy Simpson. Excepting the retention of some individual poetic devices (such as anaphora and assonance), replication of Seneca’s poetics is unimportant for this

Main 17 project; much more important is connecting Roman and American drama and culture via regionalized translation. I have relied on the poetics of Appalachian speech8 to convey the richness of the text rather than attempting to force the aesthetic and musical qualities of Latin poetry onto English.

For the most part, I have chosen not to render the language of the characters phonetically.

I have allowed for certain contractions (“gonna” for “going to,” “screamin’” for “screaming,” etc.), but otherwise the pronunciation of the dialect is not visually represented on the page. I have done this in part to expand accessibility. When a dialect is written phonetically, it has the potential to obscure the meaning and artistry of the text for readers unfamiliar with the dialect

(Nida 1982: 130). This could limit the accessibility and intelligibility of my translation for a large number of readers. I also wished to avoid the appearance of belittling Appalachian English and people. Written dialect has a long history as a means of disparaging and othering oppressed groups (Slater 1994: 87-8). If I were to render the Appalachian English phonetically, it could easily be interpreted as mocking or misrepresenting the dialect. These potential problems are mitigated by presenting the language in a mostly standardized manner and relying on the reader or performer to supply the phonetic qualities of Appalachian English.9

Characters’ names have been entirely domesticated to an American context. Some of these are obvious phonetic parallels: Oedipus is Eddie, Jocasta is Jo, Manto is Samantha. Some are culturally influenced, as in the translation of Teiresias to Solomon (after the Biblical king associated with mysticism) or Creon to Craven (after horror director Wes Craven). The Nuntius

8 This refers to regionally specific figures of speech, rhythms, phonetics, and other aural qualities of Appalachian speech. 9 A published translation of the entire play demands a phonetic guide to Appalachian English, lest readers and performers approach the text with an incomplete or incorrect understanding of the dialect. Main 18 who reports Oedipus’ self-mutilation is a young man named Angel, which is derived from the

Greek synonym ἄγγελος. This reflects Seneca’s tendency to insert wry wordplay into moments of tension, especially interlingual puns (Ahl 1985: 60-4; Meltzer 1988: 311). I have consolidated the Chorus into a single character, an elderly woman named Coral, who not only assumes a traditional choral role, but also serves as a visual metaphor of the history and health of Thebes in its new Appalachian context. Even in this new setting, the city retains its Greek name. Other place names have been domesticated to reflect the geography of the Appalachian Mountains.

I have stripped the text entirely of direct references to Greco-Roman myth. Some myths I have conflated with events from Appalachian history, such as the references to the Spartoi in

586-8. I have rendered others much more generally and adapted their main ideas to an American context, in varying degrees of specificity. The most direct reference to an ancient myth in my translation is the “Icarus Ode” in the final scene; even here, Icarus and Daedalus go unnamed, and the tale is presented as a story told to Coral long ago by her father. All mentions of

Roman/Olympian gods have been converted to references to the Christian God, with Satan standing in for certain chthonic figures.

Ultimately, not all events in the play can be neatly domesticated. Certain aspects of the tragedy are inextricable from the cultural context in which Seneca generated them. Manto’s gruesome haruspicy and Teiresias’ necromantic ritual, for example, have no obvious parallel in

Appalachian culture. Rather than force these events into a cultural framework in which they don’t belong, I have left them largely intact. This invites a juxtaposition between the source and target cultures and foreignizes the translation. The spectrum of foreignization (the act of highlighting the alien aspects of a text and bringing the reader closer to the source text) versus domestication (the act of minimizing foreignness and bringing the source text closer to the

Main 19 reader) has been a dominant aspect of translation theory for centuries (Schleiermacher 1815: 49;

Venuti 1995: 20). I lean heavily towards domestication in this project, but where the events of the play cannot be easily disguised as American counterparts, there exist moments of extreme foreignization injected into an otherwise domesticated text.

The tension between the domesticated translation and foreignizing plot forces the audience to recognize that despite the heavy domestication throughout, the play does not originate in an American context. This tension means that I am highly visible as a translator— that is, I do not strive for an illusion of transparency, which seeks to mitigate as much as possible the receptor’s awareness of the translator (Venuti 1995: 1-6). Moreover, I do not claim to be a neutral party in the act of translation, since such neutrality is impossible—I must necessarily be reflected in my translation, as part of a conversation between author, text, and reader (Briggs

2017: 109). Despite heavy domestication, I do not attempt to disguise Seneca’s Oedipus as an original American tragedy. The Romanitas of the play is made even more obvious by its alien and anachronistic nature. Thus the dichotomy of Rome and America is conspicuous throughout, even when the ancient is heavily disguised in the translation.

Main 20

OEDIPUS 291-402: Manto’s Sacrifice

Context: This scene takes place outdoors, in the moments before dawn. Eddie, a well-off man in his mid-thirties, stands with Craven, a man in his late fifties. Solomon, a blind man so old as to be ageless, stands with Samantha, in her mid- twenties. Solomon is a minister of unclear denomination, and commands strong respect. Between the two pairs is a makeshift altar from a butcher’s block, with a brazier.

OE. EDDIE Sacrate divis, proximum Phoebo caput, Come on, father. You’re the responsa solve; fare, quem poenae petant.10 closest to God—tell us who we need to go after

TI. SOLOMON Quod tarda fatu est lingua, quod quaerit moras You might shouldn’t drag that haut te quidem, magnanime, mirari addecet: outta me ... You’re a good boy, visu carenti magna pars veri latet. 295 Eddie, but there’s a reason I didn’t sed quo vocat me patria, quo Phoebus, sequar: wanna talk about this. It wants to fata eruantur; si foret viridis mihi stay hidden. But I’ll follow God’s calidusque sanguis, pectore exciperem deum. will and help my kin. The Spirit appellite aris candidum tergo bovem don’t slay me like it used to when curvoque numquam colla depressam iugo. 300 I was a younger man, but I’ll do tu lucis inopem, gnata, genitorem regens my best to shed light on the truth. manifesta sacri signa fatidici refer. Bring a bull to the block. A white- backed one, and a heifer what ne’er felt the yoke on its neck. Daughter, be your daddy’s eyes— show me the signs and wonders of our Lord.

The bull and heifer are led by attendants to the altar.

MA. SAMANTHA Opima sanctas victima ante aras stetit. The cattle at the block, a bull and a heifer, both of ’em fine animals.

10 My Latin text is based largely on Zwierlein’s, with some deviations in accordance with Boyle’s. Main 21

TI. SOLOMON In vota superos voce sollemni voca May the Lord bear witness on us arasque dono turis Eoi extrue. 305 today. Light that incense there.

Samantha lights the brazier.

MA. SAMANTHA Iam tura sacris caelitum ingessi focis. I’ve lit it. It’s all ready.

TI. SOLOMON Quid flamma? largas iamne comprendit dapes? What’s the fire doin’? Is it all a- burning?

The fire flashes up, bright and colorful, and dies down

MA. SAMANTHA Subito refulsit lumine et subito occidit. It just exploded, daddy, but it’s dead now.

TI. SOLOMON Vtrumne clarus ignis et nitidus stetit But what did it do exactly? Did it rectusque purum verticem caelo tulit 310 shoot up straight tall and light up et summam in auras fusus explicuit comam? the sky fore disappearing? Or did an latera circa serpit incertus viae it go all kinds of cattywampus, et fluctuante turbidus fumo labat? shake and smoke in low circles?

MA. SAMANTHA Non una facies mobilis flammae fuit: It didn’t do just one thing. It was imbrifera qualis implicat varios sibi 315 like if a rainbow was a-shinin’ Iris colores, parte quae magna poli over storm clouds, with every curvata picto nuntiat nimbos sinu color you could think—blue and (quis desit illi quive sit dubites color). gold weaved in and out with caerulea fulvis mixta oberravit notis, bloody red, and then vanished in sanguinea rursus; ultima in tenebras abit. 320 the black smoke. But the fire’s sed ecce pugnax ignis in partes duas split in two, daddy—the embers discedit et se scindit unius sacri are in two piles stead of one, discors favilla— genitor, horresco intuens: fighting with each other, and—oh libata Bacchi dona permutat cruor God—the wine’s changed to ambitque densus regium fumus caput 325 blood, and smoke’s all gathered ipsosque circa spissior vultus sedet round Eddie’s head now, so dark et nube densa sordidam lucem abdidit. you can’t hardly see his face. It’s quid sit, parens, effare. pitch black … What’s it all mean, daddy? You gotta tell us.

Main 22

TI. SOLOMON Quid fari queam What in God’s name ... I’m as lost inter tumultus mentis attonitae vagus? as all y’all here. I couldn’t tell you. quidnam loquar? sunt dira, sed in alto mala; 330 Couldn’t tell you. Somethin’ bad’s solet ira certis numinum ostendi notis: goin’ on here. The Lord usually quid istud est quod esse prolatum volunt makes it damn clear what He iterumque nolunt et truces iras tegunt? wants. He wants us to see, but pudet deos nescio quid. huc propere admove don’t want us to neither. What et sparge salsa colla taurorum mola. 335 could it mean? What could shame placidone vultu sacra et admotas manus even God to speak? Come on now, patiuntur? bring those cattle, quickly, get ’em ready. They calm?

MA. SAMANTHA Altum taurus attollens caput The bull’s actin’ up ... The sun’s primos ad ortus positus expavit diem comin’ up and the higher it gets, trepidusque vultum obliquat et radios fugit. the more agitated he is. It’s like he’s afraid of lookin’ at the light.

TI. SOLOMON Vnone terram vulnere afflicti petunt? 340 Go ahead and cut ’em, see if they go down easy, all at once.

Samantha sacrifices the cattle, first the heifer, then the bull. The heifer goes down quickly, but the bull takes longer. She has to stab it twice.

MA. SAMANTHA Iuvenca ferro semet imposito induit The heifer done came down easy. et vulnere uno cecidit, at taurus duos Like to fell on the blade, almost perpessus ictus huc et huc dubius ruit like she wanted to die. The bull animamque fessus vix reluctantem exprimit. took two tries. He really didn’t want to go. Clung on for dear life.

TI. SOLOMON Vtrum citatus vulnere angusto micat 345 Is the blood spurtin’ fast from the An lentus altas irrigate plagas cruor? cut, or is it seepin’ slow and deep?

MA. SAMANTHA Huius per ipsam qua patet pectus viam The heifer’s blood’s comin’ out of affusus amnis. huius exiguo graves her chest like a river. The bull’s maculantur ictus imbre; sed versus retro wounds are just a little bloody, but per ora multus sanguis atque oculos redit. 350 … it’s like the blood turned back

Main 23

inside him and’s pourin’ out of his mouth and his eyes …

TI. SOLOMON Infausta magnos sacra terrores cient. This is a bad sign … But check the sed ede certas viscerum nobis notas. insides. Those’ll tell us for sure.

Samantha cuts open the bull, spilling its insides. They are putrid, rotten, and blackened with disease.

MA. SAMANTHA Genitor, quid hoc est? non levi motu, ut solent, Father, I don’t understand. The agitata trepidant exta, sed totas manus guts usually shake a bit, but quatiunt novusque prosilit venis cruor. 355 they’re a-writhin’ like nothin’ I cor marcet aegrum penitus ac mersum latet ever saw. More and more blood liventque venae; magna pars fibris abest keeps gushin’ out. The heart’s all et felle nigro tabidum spumat iecur, shriveled up and sunk, the veins ac (semper omen unico imperio grave) are angry. It’s like half the organs en capita paribus bina consurgunt toris; 360 up and left … The liver will tell us sed utrumque caesum tenuis abscondit caput what we need to know, if’n I can membrana: latebram rebus occultis negans find it. Eugh, it’s rotted! Even the hostile valido robore insurgit latus bile’s turned black. Look at that, septemque venas tendit; has omnis retro the lobe’s split in two—that don’t prohibens reverti limes oblicus secat. 365 ever bode well for the town. mutatus ordo est, sede nil propria iacet, They’re both just as big, and sed acta retro cuncta: non animae capax there’s a caul over each one. Ain’t in parte dextra pulmo sanguineus iacet, nowhere to hide … One’s more non laeva cordi regio, non molli ambitu rotted than the other, choked by omenta pingues visceri obtendunt sinus: 370 seven swollen veins. It’s like it got natura versa est, nulla lex utero manet, twisted and strangled. [She moves scrutemur, unde tantus hic extis rigor. to the heifer and cuts it open.] quod hoc nefas? conceptus innuptae bovis. Heifer’s organs are all moved and nec more solito positus alieno in loco, twisted around—nothing’s in the implet parentem; membra cum gemitu movet, 375 right spot. The lungs are full of rigore tremulo debiles artus micant; blood instead of air. They’re infecit atras lividus fibras cruor pushed all the way to the right, and temptantque turpes mobilem trunci gradum, the heart’s on their left. The et inane surgit corpus ac sacros petit stomach wall ain’t there holding cornu ministros; viscera effugiunt manum. 380 everything together. Everything’s neque ista, quae te pepulit, armenti gravis all cattywampus … Her womb’s vox est nec usquam territi resonant greges: shoved way down in there. Wait immugit aris ignis et trepidant foci. … it feels like there’s something in there! She never did mate, but here she is, ready to burst. You

Main 24

really shouldn’t be here. [The altar bursts into flame, and the corpse of the heifer begins to shift. Manto falls back against the corpse of the bull, which also begins to shift.] Sweet Jesus, it’s like they’re tryin’ to get up and knock the altar down with their horns. That’s the flames that’re makin’ all that noise though. Christ, it sounds like the whole valley’s filled with screaming cows …

OE. EDDIE Quid ista sacri signa terrifici ferant What does all of it mean? I need to exprome: voces aure non timida hauriam: 385 know. Come on, father, whatever solent extrema facere securos mala. it means, I can take it. The worst dangers’ll calm a man like nothing else.

TI. SOLOMON His invidebis quibus opem quaeris malis. The plague will be small potatoes compared to what I got to say.

OE. EDDIE Memora quod unum scire caelicolae volunt, God clearly wants me to know contaminarit rege quis caeso manus. something. And you have to tell me, Father. What dirty son of a bitch killed Linus?

TI. SOLOMON Nec alta caeli quae levi pinna secant 390 Can’t no sign tell us what you nec fibra vivis rapta pectoribus potest wanna know. No flying dove, no ciere nomen; alia temptanda est via: cow’s guts neither. We gotta talk ipse evocandus noctis aeternae plagis, to Linus himself—only he can tell emissus Erebo ut caedis auctorem indicet. us from Beyond who done the reseranda tellus, Ditis inplacabile 395 deed. We have to break that veil, numen precandum, populus infernae Stygia pray and draw out all the haints of huc extrahendus: ede cui mandes sacrum; Hades. You can’t join in this nam te, penes quem summa regnorum, nefas though, Eddie. You’re too high up, invisere umbras. too close to the heart of it. Tell me who you trust with this and he’ll come with us.

OE. EDDIE Te, Creo, hic poscit labor,

Main 25 ad quem secundum regna respiciunt mea. 400 This sounds like a job for you, Craven. The people trust you near as much as me.

TI. SOLOMON Dum nos profundae claustra laxamus Stygis, You set here while we’re gone, populare Bacchi laudibus carmen sonet. Eddie. You and yours settle down with some whiskey, and pray.

DISCUSSION

This first scene illustrates well some of the visual and political themes that exist in

American literature and drama that treats incest, most especially the scene’s focus on concealed gore and decay. The cattle are ostensibly pristine and unspoiled, but once cut open, exhibit severe signs of disease and necrosis. The putrid guts of the sacrifices, namely the liver, reflect the sickness that pervades Oedipus’ kingdom (359 semper omen unico imperio grave). As the family unit and government break down due to Oedipus’ incest, so too do the innards of sacrifices made on his behalf. A similar phenomenon occurs in many American plays that treat incest, in which visible biological or urban decay belies the unnatural sexual behavior taking place in secret. For example, American playwright Djuna Barnes, herself a survivor of abusive incest, frequently associates decay with sexuality, as I discussed in the Introduction (pp. 3-4 above). Indeed, Barnes’ whole corpus is filled with what Cotsell terms “a sense of fatal intimacy that draws the faux surface into the appalling world of … incest” (2005: 121-2). Likewise,

Manto’s sacrifice of the cattle reflects the state of Thebes: penetration of the cows’ flesh uncovers the moral and biological decay brought on by Oedipus’ penetration of his mother.

This connection is strengthened by the sacrifice of both a heifer and a bull. The gender(s) of the two victims have been debated, as they depend on editors’ reading depressam or depressum in 300. Töchterle notes that the distinction in gender is purposeful and symbolic

Main 26

(1994: 308 n. 300). Both Sluiter and Boyle accept that the victims are of different genders

(Sluiter 1941: 90 n. 300; Boyle 2011: 190 n. ad. 299-302). Sluiter is also unconvinced by

Garrod’s assertion that reading depressam conflicts with the description of the victims as taurorum in 335 (1911: 218). In construing the victims as a bull and a heifer rather than two bulls, the connection between the gore and decay in this scene and the incestuous marriage of

Oedipus and Jocasta is strengthened. The bull, unable to look at the flames or the light of day, is

Oedipus, while the heifer who dies willingly and whose uterus is in an unnatural state is Jocasta, and their putrid innards reflect the decayed state of their marriage and their city (Busch 2007:

228-31).

The sacrifice itself is not easily domesticated into an American context. Appalachia remains a predominantly Christian region (Humphries 2015: 36-46), and animal sacrifice is not practiced in its churches. While divination is a common practice of Appalachian folk magic, and one which takes many forms (Richards 2019: 121-32), the kind of haruspicy (extispicium) that

Manto conducts in this scene is not practiced in modern-day Appalachia. Since there is no analogous practice within contemporary Appalachian culture, I have left this event undomesticated. This is a measured decision, based on the target audience’s ability to consider parallels and disparities between the two cultures at play, Roman and Appalachian, as I stressed in the Introduction (pp. 16-20).

The acts of sacrificing the cattle and performing divination with their innards stand out in this Appalachian context, thereby further accentuating the horror of the scene and highlighting the dichotomy between the ancient source material and the context of its reception. Here the grotesque is to the ordinary as the foreignized is to the domesticated. Scholars have noted the literary application of the grotesque as a means of grabbing an audience’s attention by using it as

Main 27 a reference point for considering its opposite, whether that opposite is mundane or sublime (Van

Rhys 1995: 351-2). Samantha’s extispicium serves this function in my translation. With the sacrifice and haruspicy unchanged, there results for spectators a disturbance in visual and cultural continuity, which forces them to reflect on not only the grotesque nature of the scene, but also how regional translations such as this one can reshape our perceptions of ancient texts.

The extispicium serves as a reminder that this is not an Appalachian text—the ancient reemerges and reminds the reader that there are elements of the source text whose alterity cannot be fully accessed even through this heavily domesticated translation.

Tiresias, the blind old seer of ancient tragedy, has been thoroughly domesticated in the form of a Charismatic-Protestant minister, Solomon, named for the Biblical king, whose name has long been associated with mysticism and magic (Goodenough 1969: 269-71). His daughter

Samantha, Manto in Seneca, retains the latter’s function as his attendant and assistant. As a minister and practitioner of folk magic, the character Solomon is entrenched in the spiritual practices of Appalachia. While the mixture of Christian and occult practices here may seem paradoxical, Christianity and the Bible play major roles within Appalachian magics, which have evolved within Protestant tradition throughout Appalachia; Appalachian witchcraft and divination are rooted much more strongly in Biblical sensibilities and rules than in any pagan practices due to the strong culture of Christianity that dominates the region (Richards 2019: 17-

19). It would not, then, be entirely impossible for a Christian minister in Appalachia to have a vested interest in folk magic or to engage to some extent in ostensibly pagan praxis.

In accordance with the cultural climate of the target language, all references to Apollo have been domesticated as references to the Christian God. I have identified Tiresias’ communion with Apollo with the phenomenon of being “slain in the Spirit” experienced in some

Main 28

Protestant denominations. When a worshipper is slain, they are thought to be in direct contact with the Holy Spirit, which overwhelms them to the point of ecstatic glossolalia (Leonard 1973:

471; McQuerry 1979: 150). Appalachian poet and essayist Silas House recalls witnessing members of his community slain as a momentous, joyous occasion:

Most everyone was standing. Eyes closed, holy languages chewing at their lips, prayers eating their ways through the ceiling, arms swaying, palms open, fingers spread wide as if light would shoot out of their polishless tips. Some of them couldn’t quite control their bodies: heads lolled about their necks, or shot back and forth in a quick rhythm . . . Quite a few danced: this one shuffling in place with a gentle lift of his feet; this one running up and down the aisles like a chicken with its head cut off; this one twirling round and round like a woman showing off her bell-shaped skirt at a square dance. Then there were the ones up front, at the altar. The holiest ones of all. Speaking the holiest of tongues, a low hum that could not so much be heard as seen in the occasional convulsions that electrified them, God sizzling up and down their bodies so that they had been knocked to the floor and lay there. Being slain, they called it. Or: Slain in the Spirit. And this was what most everyone wanted. This was the highest form of worship. This was only accomplished by those who lived “right,” who were the best people, the most holy, the most revered, the ones without blemish (2015: 3-4).

In Seneca’s Oedipus, Tiresias is one such holy, revered figure. Tiresias is granted visions of the future and of the true nature of things through his connection to Apollo, similarly to the manner in which some Christians profess to experience revelations through being slain in the Spirit.

Being slain is an intensely physical experience; Solomon is now too old to withstand the full force of the Holy Spirit (297-8 si foret viridis mihi / calidusque sanguis, pectore exciperem deum), and so relies on other signs from God, as conveyed to him by his daughter.

Beyond the cultural issues presented in this scene, Seneca’s text itself is fairly straightforward and easy to translate. Only two vocabulary words peculiar to Appalachia are present. The first is “cattywampus,” also pronounced “catterwampus,” a word which means either “crooked” or generally “out of sorts” (Jackson 1975: 158). The other, near the end of the

Main 29 passage, is “haint,” a word which may refer to any number of ghosts or spirits, benign or malicious (Richard 2019: 98, 101). These two words were deliberately chosen to highlight the grotesque and macabre content of the scene and the political turmoil that it reveals.

Several grammatical idiosyncrasies of Appalachian English are featured in this passage.

Solomon and Samantha both exhibit the phenomenon of a- prefixing. Placing the prefix before a verb (particularly present progressives and participles, as in Manto’s “if a rainbow was a-shinin’ over storm clouds,” 315-16) may serve any number of semantic purposes, but is often (as it is here) a means of adding emphasis or vividness to description (Wolfram 1988: 248-50). Despite its versatility and nebulous usage, a- prefixing is generally seen as an archaism, even among

Appalachians (Wolfram and Christian 1976: 77), and so is only used by the elderly Solomon and his daughter. Eddie does not use this construction, as he is a younger, richer man more accustomed to stifling his accent in mixed company. Other Appalachian peculiarities in this passage include the inclusion of the auxiliary word “done” as an indicator of past time at 341-2

(Wolfram and Christian 1976: 92-3) and the use of “what” at 299-300 as a replacement for the relative pronouns “who” or “that” (Wolfram and Christian 1976: 128).

Main 30

OEDIPUS 530-658: Creon’s Necromantic Ekphrasis

Context: This scene takes place outside, in the early morning. Eddie and Craven stand outside Eddie’s home. Craven is visibly disturbed. Finally convinced to tell the following story, he sits down on the ground and starts to narrate in a hushed tone.

CREON CRAVEN est procul ab urbe lucus ilicibus niger 530 If you walk out of town into the Dircaea circa vallis inriguae loca. mountains, walk till the dogs get cupressus altis exerens siluis caput mean and you can’t see a bit of virente semper alligat trunco nemus, humanity anymore, you’ll find a curvosque tendit quercus et putres situ hollow a ways off from the city, so annosa ramos: huius abrupit latus 535 overgrown with mountain holly that edax vetustas; illa, iam fessa cadens you can’t hardly see. The whole radice, fulta pendet aliena trabe. place was overgrown, full of amara bacas laurus et tiliae leves Virginia pine and old oak trees, all et Paphia myrtus et per immensum mare knotty and twisted. All the trees motura remos alnus et Phoebo obvia 540 were rotted and fallen all on top of enode Zephyris pinus opponens latus. each other, shaky deadfalls medio stat ingens arbor atque umbra gravi everywhere. The place was full of silvas minores urguet et magno ambitu laurel hells, basswood, showy fly, diffusa ramos una defendit nemus. alders and pines, solid wood for tristis sub illa, lucis et Phoebi inscius, 545 building. Down in the middle of the restagnat umor frigore aeterno rigens; hollow there’s this big old oak, so limosa pigrum circumit fontem palus. tall as to cast a shadow over all the huc ut sacerdos intulit senior gradum, others. It lorded over the whole haut est moratus: praestitit noctem locus. place. There’s a creek that flowed tum effossa tellus, et super rapti rogis 550 out from under its roots. It was iaciuntur ignes. ipse funesto integit freezing cold, Eddie—I don’t think vates amictu corpus et frondem quatit; it had seen the sunlight in forever. squalente cultu maestus ingreditur senex, 554 Old Solomon set there in the mud, lugubris imos palla perfundit pedes, 553 quick as you please. He and his little mortifera canam taxus adstringit comam. 555 girl dug a pit there in the dark, and nigro bidentes vellere atque atrae boves lit a fire down in it. I swear it felt antro trahuntur. flamma praedatur dapes like they were making a funeral pyre vivumque trepidat igne ferali pecus. out there in the woods. He was all wrapped in black, like he was mourning, but his cloak dragged down in the mud at his feet. He wore yew leaves all in his hair, dead branches dried up and twisted into a

Main 31

crown. Samantha brought in a bull and a sheep, black ones this time, not white like before. She dragged ’em into the hollow and drove ’em into the fire. They burned alive, twistin’ and writhin’ in the flames. vocat inde manes teque qui manes regis After that, Solomon called on et obsidentem claustra Lethaei lacus, 560 God and all the spirits that carmenque magicum voluit et rabido minax watch over the dead. He started decantat ore quidquid aut placat leves turning over weird chants, aut cogit umbras; sanguinem libat focis singing strange noises like he’d solidasque pecudes urit et multo specum been slain, tryin’ to get the dead saturat cruore; libat et niveum insuper 565 to come to him. He poured lactis liquorem, fundit et Bacchum manu blood overtop of the burning laeva canitque rursus ac terram intuens animals, then poured out milk graviore manes voce et attonita citat. and Barboursville wine together latravit Hecates turba; ter valles cauae into the pit. He fell down to the sonuere maestum, tota succusso solo 570 earth, moanin’ and twitchin’, pulsata tellus. “audior” vates ait, singin’ to the dead in that “rata verba fudi: rumpitur caecum chaos strange tongue. I heard dogs iterque populis Ditis ad superos datur.” howling deep in the woods. A subsedit omnis silva et erexit comas, whole pack of ’em howled and duxere rimas robora et totum nemus 575 screamed three times all concussit horror, terra se retro dedit together, so loud it like to shook gemuitque penitus: sive temptari abditum the earth. Old Solomon snapped Acheron profundum mente non aequa tulit, his head up and said, “They sive ipsa tellus, ut daret functis viam, hear me now—I said it all right. compage rupta sonuit, aut ira furens 580 All Hell’s broke loose and the triceps catenas Cerberus movit graves. dead have themselves path to meet the living.” All the trees subito dehiscit terra et immenso sinu pulled away, leaves all standin’ laxata patuit—ipse pallentes deos up, and the ground shook under vidi inter umbras, ipse torpentes lacus us. The Devil was angry we noctemque veram; gelidus in venis stetit 585 were foolin’ around in his haesitque sanguis. saeva prosiluit cohors kingdom and was shakin’ his et stetit in armis omne vipereum genus, chains at us, or the earth was fratrum catervae dente Dircaeo satae. 588 cracking open to let the dead tum torva Erinys sonuit et caecus Furor 590 rise up to meet us, one. Then Horrorque et una quidquid aeternae creant sure enough the ground split celantque tenebrae: Luctus avellens comam wide open. I swear to you, Ed, I aegreque lassum sustinens Morbus caput, saw with my own damn eyes gravis Senectus sibimet et pendens Metus the demons themselves driftin’ avidumque populi Pestis Ogygii malum— 589 among the shades, between the nos liquit animus; ipsa quae ritus senis 595 putrid pools and thick shadows artesque norat stupuit. intrepidus parens of the hollow. A fierce band of audaxque damno convocat Ditis feri Shawnee leapt out of the pit,

Main 32 exsangue vulgus: ilico, ut nebulae leves, Black Snake and his men, volitant et auras libero caelo trahunt. armed to the teeth and out for non tot caducas educat frondes Eryx 600 blood. Fury screamed out, and nec vere flores Hybla tot medio creat, Rage and Terror and all the cum examen arto nectitur densum globo, other evils that the mountains fluctusque non tot frangit Ionium mare, begotten and concealed: Grief, nec tanta gelidi Strymonis fugiens minas Disease, Old Age, Uncertainty permutat hiemes ales et caelum secans 605 and Extinction, the curses we tepente Nilo pensat Arctoas nives, live with on earth. I thought I quot ille populos vatis eduxit sonus. was going crazy. Even Pavide latebras nemoris umbrosi petunt Samantha was scared, even animae trementes: primus emergit solo, though she’d learned all her dextra ferocem cornibus taurum premens, 610 daddy’s crafts. It didn’t bother Zethus, manuque sustinet laeva chelyn blind Solomon none. He called qui saxa dulci traxit Amphion sono, out to ’em all, and they interque natos Tantalis tandem suos surrounded him like a fog, tuto superba fert caput fastu grave breathing in that mountain air et numerat umbras. peior hac genetrix adest 615 for the first time in God knows furibunda Agave, tota quam sequitur manus how long. There were more lost partita regem: sequitur et Bacchas lacer souls than you’d find leaves on Pentheus tenetque saevus etiamnunc minas. Mount Mitchell, or flowers on the Blue Ridge in the middle of Spring, more than there are waves in the sea, or birds sweeping over the mountains as they try to escape the cold each winter. He brought up so many dead folks, Eddie ... I could see them moving around in the shadows, familiar faces. I saw an old farmer who wrangled all his bulls with his own hands, and his brother, always pickin’ on his banjo. Now he played like nothin’ you ever heard. His wife was there too. They lost a lot of children, those two. Some sickness or another took every last one of ’em, and after the last one died she never was the same. I saw a woman who killed her boy in a drunken fight. He was a mean bastard. One night he and his mama got at each other and she up and cut him down right there in the

Main 33

house, and then she died herself a bit later. tandem vocatus saepe pudibundum extulit But Solomon kept on chantin’ caput atque ab omni dissidet turba procul 620 until he found the haint he was celatque semet (instat et Stygias preces lookin’ for, hidin’ in the geminat sacerdos, donec in apertum efferat shadows. Jesus, Eddie, it was vultus opertos) Laius—fari horreo: Linus himself, as he died, all stetit per artus sanguine effuso horridus, bloody and dirty, hair all matted paedore foedo squalidam obtectus comam, 625 from the dust and the et ore rabido fatur: “O Cadmi effera, blood. And he just up and cruore semper laeta cognato domus, started railin’ at us! “Thebes!” vibrate thyrsos, enthea gnatos manu He said, “Families always did lacerate potius—maximum Thebis scelus tear each other apart here. maternus amor est. patria, non ira deum 630 Crazy sons of bitches … Go on, sed scelere raperis: non gravi flatu tibi cut up your sons, God guides luctificus Auster nec parum pluuio aethere your hand! A mother’s love was satiata tellus halitu sicco nocet, always the biggest problem in sed rex cruentus, pretia qui saevae necis this town. All y’all think it’s sceptra et nefandos occupat thalamos patris 635 God or Satan who’s been inuisa proles: sed tamen peior parens plaguin’ you? You think it’s quam gnatus, utero rursus infausto grauis disease, or blight that’s killin’ egitque in ortus semet et matri impios you off? It’s your own God- fetus regessit, quique vix mos est feris, damn leader! He killed me and fratres sibi ipse genuit—implicitum malum 640 got his father’s office and his magisque monstrum Sphinge perplexum sua. wife—they don’t even know te, te cruenta sceptra qui dextra geris, he’s her kid! And she’s even te pater inultus urbe cum tota petam worse, taking him in her womb et mecum Erinyn pronubam thalami traham, like she did. But he’s come traham sonantis verbera, incestam domum 645 back home, sired unholy vertam et penates impio Marte obteram. children with his mother. There proinde pulsum finibus regem ocius are wild animals what know agite exulem quocumque; funesto gradu better! He’s his own step-father. solum relinquet: uere florifero uirens You always liked riddles, reparabit herbas; spiritus puros dabit 650 Eddie, try and figure that one! vitalis aura, veniet et silvis decor; I’ll get you, boy. I’ll get you Letum Luesque, Mors Labor Tabes Dolor, good, even if I have to take out comitatus illo dignus, excedent simul; the whole town with you. I’ll et ipse rapidis gressibus sedes volet ride with the Furies and whip effugere nostras, sed graves pedibus moras 655 you raw as long as you sleep in addam et tenebo: reptet incertus viae, my bed. I’ll ruin you and your baculo senili triste praetemptans iter: house, our ancestral home, burn eripite terras, auferam caelum pater’ it right down if I have to.” He looked at me, Eddie, and he said, “Y’all better throw that son of a bitch out. I don’t care where he goes, but when he

Main 34

does, life will return to Thebes. The grass’ll grow green, the air’ll be sweet again and the trees’ll bear fruit. All the death and destruction and pain and disease’ll leave with him. They’re all he deserves. And I’ll make sure it ain’t easy for him. It’ll be slow, and hard, and he won’t know which way to turn. No, he’ll crawl on his hands and knees, testing each step in turn. Y’all take away the land and I, his true-blood father, will take away the sky.” And that was all, Eddie.

DISCUSSION

Before discussing the thematic and artistic aspects of translating this passage, it is necessary to briefly acknowledge some textual issues surrounding Creon’s messenger’s speech.

Zwierlein proposes lacunae after 537 and at 549a (between moratus and praestitit). Boyle denies the necessity of these gaps, as do Sluiter and Töchterle.11 I agree with this position, on the grounds that there is not a sufficient break in the sense of the passage to assume lacunae; the lack of a verb to cement the passage can be explained away as an ellipsis of est. Despite objections from Boyle et al. (Boyle 2011: 243 n. ad 551-5), I have accepted the transposition of 553 in between 554 and 555, which allows for a smoother sentence structure and creates an assonance of anxiety with vates … quatit … squalente. I have also accepted the transposition of 589 in between 594 and 595, as in Boyle’s, Zwierlein’s, and Töchterle’s editions.

11 Boyle 2011: 240 n. ad. 538-41, 242 n. ad. 548-51; Sluiter 1941: 102 n. 537; Töchterle 1994: 435 n. ad. 538-41, 439 n. [“ad’] 549. Main 35

This ekphrasis is deeply rooted in the grotesque and horrific. Creon sets the scene as a locus horridus, describing in detail the shadowy grove: overgrown, cut off from sunlight by a thick canopy of gnarled branches, desolate and cold. By having Craven quote Van Eerden’s

“Walk Till the Dogs Get Mean” (2015: 23-9) I connect the ominous mystery of the grove to the poetic literature of Appalachia via an intertextual link, thereby anchoring the scene’s location within the poetics of Appalachian space and spirituality. As Creon tells it, Tiresias functions less as a prophet and more like a witch who makes blood sacrifices while murmuring strange chants until the spirits of the dead are bent to his will. As I demonstrated in the Introduction, Appalachia as a whole is often represented in horror media as a locus horridus (pp. 12-15). Craven’s name in my translation is an homage to horror director Wes Craven, whose work The Hills Have Eyes helped define the negative role that rural America plays in contemporary horror (Hayden 2013:

194). Films like Deliverance, The Descent, and Silence of the Lambs, among others, have transmogrified Appalachia’s hollows, caves, mines, and towns into hostile spaces in ways that recall Creon’s corrupted nemus. As a practitioner of chthonic magics and harbinger of misfortune, the witch-seer Tiresias finds echoes in characters from such rurally set works as the

Pumpkinhead series and Cabin in the Woods.

Descriptions of the various trees found in Seneca’s locus horridus present a special challenge for localized translation. All the trees Seneca mentions are native to the ancient

Mediterranean; the same cannot be said of Appalachia, necessitating the adaptation of certain trees to their American counterparts. The cypress, which starts Seneca’s catalogue of trees, does not grow in Appalachia, and has been replaced with the Virginia pine (pinus virginiana). Oak and laurel both grow in Appalachia; the latter is so prolific in some areas that they are characterized as “laurel hells,” a common term in the mountains for a particularly dense and

Main 36 inhospitable thicket. Seneca also mentions the linden tree (likely tilia cordata), which has an

American counterpart more commonly called basswood (tilia americana). As the cypress,

Seneca’s “Paphian myrtle” does not grow in America. The myrtle was a common decorative shrub in the Roman world (Thompson 1937: 422-3), and associated strongly with Venus. Its replacement here is showy fly (lonicera x bella, or Bell’s honeysuckle), a hybrid species of honeysuckle which has become invasive in Appalachia (Boyce 2010: 27-8). Similarly to myrtle, honeysuckles are popular decorative plants in America, and are frequently associated with erotic elements in the literature of the American South, such as in Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury

(Carmignani 1990: 309-11).

The reader gets another glimpse of Solomon’s spiritual practices in this passage, as seen through Craven’s eyes. At 561-3 Tiresias chants magical incantations, and commands the dead rabido … ore. rabidus, by association with the noun rabies, bears a sense of religious frenzy and possession (OLD: s.v. rabies 1c), similar to the ecstasy of being slain in the Spirit discussed in the previous chapter. Tiresias’ mystical activity is presented as poetry, and the shared vocabulary of magic and poetry is well established (Burriss 1936: 142-4). This speech may easily be framed as the glossolalia exhibited by one slain in the Spirit. Indeed, observers of the phenomenon have noted a musicality and poetic sensibility in Pentecostal glossolalia (Williams 1981: 172-4). For this reason I have explicitly connected Solomon’s “Stygian prayers” with his comments on religious ecstasy in the previous chapter.

At 586 Creon begins to name shades that rise from the underworld to meet Tiresias’ summons. Ghost stories are common throughout Appalachia, regardless of religious and spiritual beliefs (Wilson 1973: 324), and so the inclusion of a host of haints fits well into the cultural milieu of the translation. These ghosts represent the history of Thebes leading up to the kingships

Main 37 of Laius and Oedipus. Due to the details of the myths invoked and their specific ties to Theban prehistory, these figures are especially difficult to domesticate with any specificity. Creon begins with the Spartoi, self-slaughtering warriors born from the teeth of a dragon whose descendants made up the nobility of Thebes. Due to the aboriginal and autochthonal nature of the Spartoi, I have associated them with the Native American people who populated the Appalachian

Mountains before they were colonized, namely the Shawnee (Lankford 1999: 393). I have specifically identified the Spartoi with the Shawnee warrior Blacksnake and the men who fought under him at the Battle of Sandusky in 1782, in accordance with the description of the band of

Spartoi as vipereum (587).12 Blacksnake’s band was part of a cultural response to the massacre at

Gnadenhütten, characterized by thorough and merciless application of violence and torture as part of a greater cycle of violence between Native Americans and colonists (Dowd 1992: 87-9).

This parallels Oedipus’ focus on violence and the grotesque, as well as the cycles of discord and vengeance that rack the city of Thebes throughout myth.

I have chosen to render the remaining mythic Thebans more generally. Despite their lack of specific names or identities, they play roles strongly tied to the community, as evidenced by

Craven’s recollection of their faces and lives. Zethus and his family have become a fixture in the

Appalachian Thebes. Seneca depicts Zethus as wrangling a bull with his right hand (a reference in 610 to the murder of Dirce), which I have adapted to an agricultural context. Zethus’ brother

Amphion is a musician described in Orphic terms; I have domesticated him as a banjo player, emblematic of the bluegrass genre that developed within the mountains. Niobe, Amphion’s wife, has in my translation lost her children to disease, in keeping with Apollo’s associations with

12 This also brings to mind some Appalachian snake lore, in which snakes are the objects of both respectful awe and virulent fear (Wigginton 1972: 289-300). Main 38 plague in the source material, and her eternal mourning for her dead children has been rendered as persistent trauma due to repeated loss. Agave and Pentheus are remembered negatively as a family of violent drunks, to retain the ecstatic violence central to the events of Euripides’

Bacchae. By identifying all these characters as a part of the community’s living memory, I have attempted to ensure that their connections to Theban myth and the source narratives remain intact even in my intense domestication of Seneca’s text.

Place names have also been domesticated, with the exception of Thebes itself. I have translated Eryx (600), a mountain in Sicily held up in ancient sources as one of the tallest mountains in the Mediterranean world,13 as Mount Mitchell, the tallest peak in the Appalachian

Mountains (United States Geological Survey 1980). In the next line, Seneca refers to Spring wildflowers in Hybla, also in Sicily. For this translation, I have replaced Hybla with the Blue

Ridge mountain range within Appalachia. The Blue Ridge Mountains contain tremendous floral diversity, and most of their wildflowers reach peak bloom in early-to-mid Spring (National Park

Service 2017: 1-6).

There are several noteworthy linguistic features in my translation of this passage. A prominent feature in spoken Appalachian English is a tendency to replace a final unstressed -ow sound (as in words such as “yellow” or “tobacco”) with -er (Wolfram and Christian 1976: 66).

Following this pattern, each time Craven says “hollow,” he would pronounce it as “holler” in performance. I have elected not to write this pronunciation out in my translation, both because the word is still largely written out as “hollow” in Appalachia, and because a phonetic representation of the dialect could prove distracting or obfuscating to the reader, as I stressed in

13 E.g. Aen. 12.701. Main 39 the Introduction (p. 13 above). I have included in 580 an instance of the alternative “one,” where

“one” is shorthand for “one or the other” when a speaker presents a choice between two options

(Montgomery 2006: 152-3).

A member of the upper classes of Thebes, Craven is used to speaking in a slightly more

“standardized” register, a product of code-switching. “Code-switching” more properly refers to a shift from one language system to another in a speech or conversation (Gardner-Chloros 1983:

21), but may also refer to the socially and educationally enforced intralingual translation of dialect into a “standard” variety of language (Young 2009: 50). Both definitions are exemplified here. Craven has been taught to standardize his English. As he narrates his experience, however, he becomes increasingly distressed and his accent becomes thicker, becoming less “standard” and more clearly Appalachian. I have attempted to render this shift in accent with an increased occurrence of -in’ for -ing and other ellipses, as well as more frenetic sentence structure toward the end of his ekphrasis.

Main 40

OEDIPUS 882-1061 Oedipus’ Blindness and Jocasta’s Suicide

Context: This scene takes place in the evening, in Eddie’s home. By this point, Coral, an extremely elderly woman who stands in for the chorus, is bedridden, having become increasingly infirm over the course of the play. Coral’s bed lies next to a window that overlooks the front porch, which allows her to see people approaching the house.

CHORUS CORAL Fata si liceat mihi 882 If ever God let me have my way, fingere arbitrio meo, life would be easy as driftin’ down temperem Zephyro levi the Ohio River, floatin’ on that vela, ne pressae gravi 885 gentle stream, feelin’ that soft wind spiritu antennae tremant. on my face … A simple life, no lenis et modice fluens clouds in sight. Ain’t no storm aura nec vergens latus would sink my boat, no sir. A safe ducat intrepidam ratem. life, right down the middle of that tuta me media vehat 890 river. My daddy told me once when vita decurrens via. I was a girl about a boy, a crazy Cnosium regem timens young thing, who made himself astra dum demens petit wings out of feathers and beeswax. artibus fisus novis He flew in the sky with his father to certat et veras aves 895 escape some old king, but he flew vincere ac falsis nimis too high, and fell down into the sea; imperat pinnis puer, hit the water so hard he like to nomen eripuit freto. knocked the name right out of it! callidus medium senex His daddy knew better, and lost Daedalus librans iter 900 sight of his boy cuz he stayed in the nube sub media stetit middle of the sky. And that boy alitem expectans suum was lost forever, deep down in the (qualis accipitris minas murky water, held down by the fugit et sparsos metu weight of his wings. Goes to show conligit fetus avis), 905 … if you go too high, you’re bound donec in ponto manus to fall. [A knock on the door] movit implicitas puer Who’s this now? [Coral pulls the compede audacis viae. curtain to her bed] It’s that boy quicquid excessit modum Angel what been followin’ Jo pendet instabili loco. 910 around. Looks in an awful state. sed quid hoc? postes sonant. [Angel breaks through the door] maestus et famulus manu What’s the matter? regius quassat caput. ede quid portes novi.

Main 41

NUNTIUS ANGEL Praedicta postquam fata et infandum genus 915 It’s Mr. Ed, ma’am. He ... he was deprendit ac se scelere convictum Oedipus rantin’ an’ ravin’ about his fate, and damnavit ipse, regiam infestus petens his blood, talkin’ about how he’s invisa propero tecta penetravit gradu, damned to Hell. He tore all around qualis per arva Libycus insanit leo, town hall like a lion, spittin’ and fulvam minaci fronte concutiens iubam. 920 snarlin’, pourin’ sweat. His face, vultus furore torvus atque oculi truces, his face was wild, furious. He was gemitus et altum murmur, et gelidus volat ramblin’, mutterin’ and growlin’ sudor per artus, spumat et volvit minas deep in his throat. I couldn’t rightly ac mersus alte magnus exundat dolor. tell what he was saying. Somethin’ secum ipse saevus grande nescioquid parat 925 just exploded out of him, like it’d suisque fatis simile, ‘quid poenas moror?’ been bubblin’ and burnin’ deep ait ‘hoc scelestum pectus aut ferro petat, down inside. He looked sure. aut fervido aliquis igne vel saxo domet. Steely. Ready for something big. quae tigris aut quae saeva visceribus meis He said, “What am I waiting for? I incurret ales? ipse tu scelerum capax, 930 know I’m guilty. Won’t somebody sacer Cithaeron, vel feras in me tuas just shoot me? Burn me? Stone me emitte silvis, mitte vel rabidos canes— for my sins? Or won’t the mountain nunc redde Agauen. anime, quid mortem times? themselves do it, send wolves and mors innocentem sola Fortunae eripit.’ rabid dogs to chew on my guts? haec fatus aptat impiam capulo manum 935 Tear me apart like my family’s ensemque ducit, ‘itane? tam magnis breves been torn apart. Why should I fear poenas sceleribus solvis atque uno omnia death now? Death’s my only escape pensabis ictu? moreris: hoc patri sat est; from Fate anyway.” He took out his quid deinde matri, quid male in lucem editis knife and put it up to his neck, but gnatis, quid ipsi, quae tuum magna luit 940 then he said, “Wait, what am I scelus ruina, flebili patriae dabis? doin’? Killing myself’s too quick. solvenda non est illa quae leges ratas It ain’t good enough for what all I Natura in uno vertit Oedipoda, novos done. I’m gonna die alright, no way commenta partus, supplices eadem meis around it. And that’s what I deserve novetur. iterum vivere atque iterum mori 945 for what I done to my mama, but liceat, renasci semper ut totiens nova what about my daddy? My poor supplicia pendas— utere ingenio, miser: children? The whole town, what quod saepe fieri non potest fiat diu; suffers for my sins? There’s a way mors eligatur longa, quaeratur via things have to be. I oughta die and qua nec sepultis mixtus et vivis tamen 950 be reborn and suffer over and over exemptus erres: morere, sed citra patrem. again. Think, you son of a bitch. cunctaris, anime?’ subitus en vultus gravat You only get one chance, so you profusus imber ac rigat fletu genas. gotta make it count, make it last. I ‘et flere satis est? hactenus fundent levem need to suffer, not die but not live oculi liquorem? sedibus pulsi suis 955 neither. A living death, on this side lacrimas sequantur: hi maritales statim of death’s door, on this side of my fodiantur oculi!’ dixit atque ira furit: father. What’re you waitin’ for?” ardent minaces igne truculento genae He cried a right flood of tears, an’

Main 42 oculique vix se sedibus retinent suis; he said, “Cryin’ ain’t enough, is it? violentus audax vultus, iratus ferox, 960 Well I’ll never cry a husband’s iamiam furentis; gemuit et dirum fremens tears again after today!” He looked manus in ora torsit, at contra truces up, and I swear ma’am, he looked oculi steterunt et suam intenti manum mad as anything, eyes buggin’ out ultro insecuntur, vulneri occurrunt suo. of his head. He had bloody murder scrutatur avidus manibus uncis lumina, 965 in his eyes, wild and violent and radice ab ima funditus vulsos simul furious. He started howlin’ an’ he evolvit orbes; haeret in vacuo manus lifted his hands up to his face, put et fixa penitus unguibus lacerat cavos his fingers right up against his eyes alte recessus luminum et inanes sinus, ... And then he just ... shoved them saevitque frustra plusque quam satis est furit. 970 in! An’ he dug around in there with tantum est periclum lucis; attollit caput his fingers, rolling ‘em around deep cavisque lustrans orbibus caeli plagas in his eye sockets! He really got in noctem experitur. quicquid effossis male there, just diggin’ around with his dependet oculis rumpit, et victor deos nails, deeper than I’d of thought conclamat omnis: ‘parcite, en, patriae precor: 975 you could. And he screamed and iam iusta feci, debitas poenas tuli; ranted the whole time, cryin’ about inventa thalamis digna nox tandem meis.’ escapin’ the dangers of the light. rigat ora foedus imber et lacerum caput And he lifted up his head, looking largum revulsis sanguinem venis vomit. at the sky with empty eyes, makin’ sure he couldn’t see the stars. He stood there an’ plucked and twisted off the little pieces that still hung onto his face, and then he laughed out loud before God and everyone, and said, “Lord, have mercy on this town, I’ve done what I needed to do, taken my penance. This eternal night is all that should become of my incestuous marriage!” All this blood and shit was streaming down his face. He was bleedin’ so much, all the skin and blood vessels all ripped up ...

Angel collapses crying near Coral’s bed, utterly drained. He watches with her through the rest of the scene.

CHORUS CORAL Fatis agimur: cedite fatis; 980 We really can’t fight God’s will— non sollicitae possunt curae better just to give in to it, I reckon. mutare rati stamina fusi. Ain’t no amount of fussin’ can quicquid patimur mortale genus, change that. Everything’s part of Main 43 quicquid facimus venit ex alto, God’s plan. Everything we do, servatque suae decreta colus. 985 everything we suffer, we all just Lachesis dura revoluta manu. gotta take it. Everything’s set out omnia certo tramite vadunt for us. Everything’s set to follow a primusque dies dedit extremum: certain path, from the very first day non illa deo vertisse licet we take a breath on this earth. And quae nexa suis currunt causis. 990 God ain’t gonna change any of it it cuique ratus prece non ulla just because we’re caught up in it, mobilis ordo. no matter how we might pray for multis ipsum metuisse nocet; Him to change it. An’ if you run multi ad fatum venere suum from it, then it’s still gonna get you dum fata timent. in the end. sonuere fores atque ipse suum. 995 duce non ullo molitur iter luminis orbus.

Eddie slams the door open, stumbling inside. His face and hands are stained with blood. He is blind, but maneuvers around the house well enough due to his familiarity with it—a visual memory remains even without his eyes.

OEDIPUS EDDIE Bene habet, peractum est: iusta persolvi patri, I’ve done it, Coral. I’ve done right iuvant tenebrae, quis deus tandem mihi by my daddy. The darkness placatus atra nube perfundit caput? 1000 delights me—it’s a mercy from quis scelera donat? conscium evasi diem. God, not bein’ able to see! Penance nil, parricida, dexterae debes tuae: and pardon all in one. I don’t owe lux te refugit, vultus Oedipodam hic decet. nothin’ more. It’s a blind face what becomes an Oedipus.

CHORUS CORAL En ecce, rapido saeva prosiluit gradu Wait, someone’s comin’. [Beat] Iocasta vaecors, qualis attonita et furens 1005 It’s Jo. She’s lookin’ wild. I Cadmea mater abstulit gnato caput remember when I was a girl, the sensitque raptum, dubitat afflictum alioqui, mayor’s wife killed her baby when cupit pavetque. iam malis cessit pudor, she was blind drunk. When she et haeret ore prima vox. realized what she’d done, you could hear her screamin’ for miles. I saw her when she went to court, and the look on her face knowin’ she’d just killed her only child … It’s the same face Jo’s makin’ right

Main 44

now. She’s just standing at the door now—she wants to talk to you, I think, but she’s afraid. I don’t know if she’ll ever spit it out.

Enter Jo, a woman in her mid- fifties. She is disheveled and drunk. She revels in the irony of her situation even as she laments it.

IOCASTA JO Quid te vocem? What am I supposed to call you gnatumue? dubitas? gnatus es: gnatum pudet? 1010 now, huh? Husband? Son? Don’t invite loquere gnate— quo avertis caput you turn away from me! What, are vacuosque vultus? you ashamed to be my boy? You really are my son, like it or not.

OEDIPUS EDDIE Quis frui tenebris vetat? Who’s there? Jo? Why can’t you let quis reddit oculos? matris, en matris sonus! me live in the dark, mama? Mama perdidimus operam, congredi fas amplius … [Jo moves as if to approach him. haut est. nefandos dividat vastum mare 1015 He recoils from her footsteps.] Stay dirimatque tellus abdita et quisquis sub hoc away from me! You’re never gonna in alia versus sidera ac solem avium see me again. I’ll go across the dependet orbis alterum ex nobis ferat. country, across the sea, I’ll go straight to Hell if it means we two sinners stay apart!

IOCASTA JO Fati ista culpa est: nemo fit fato nocens. It’s not our fault Eddie. This was meant to be. There wasn’t nobody who’d ever—

OEDIPUS EDDIE Iam parce verbis, mater, et parce auribus: 1020 Don’t you give me that, Jo. Just per has reliquias corporis trunci precor, give me some peace. My body’s all per inauspicatum sanguinis pignus mei, carved up, my kids—our kids— per omne nostri nominis fas ac nefas. they’re damned, our name’s been dragged through the mud … I’m beggin’ you, just leave it be. [He turns away from her.]

IOCASTA JO Quid, anime, torpes? socia cur scelerum dare What am I waiting for? Don’t I poenas recusas? omne confusum perit, 1025 deserve to be punished? incesta, per te iuris humani decus: Everything’s caterwampus ‘cause

Main 45 morere et nefastum spiritum ferro exige. of me. I’ve got to purge my soul. non si ipse mundum concitans divum sator God, why don’t you just strike me corusca saeva tela iaculetur manu, down and get it over with? I umquam rependam sceleribus poenas pares 1030 deserve to die for this! God, I mater nefanda, mors placet: mortis via wanna die … [Loudly to Eddie] quaeratur, agedum, commoda matri manum, Come on, Eddie, you’ve got one si parricida es. restat hoc operae ultimum: more parent left to kill, you gonna rapiatur ensis; hoc iacet ferro meus finish the job? One more parent left coniunx— quid illum nomine haud vero vocas? 1035 to kill … [Beat] Give me that Buck socer est. utrumne pectori infigam meo knife! [She stalks across the room telum an patenti conditum iugulo inprimam? and picks up Eddie’s knife, which is eligere nescis vulnus: hunc, dextra, hunc pete stained from the blood on his uterum capacem, qui virum et gnatos tulit. hands.] This knife killed my… my husband. What should I call him now? My husband, or my father-in- law? Fuck. How am I supposed to do it? Stab my heart? Cut my throat? Where’s the best place? [Looking down at Eddie] Know what? This all started in my belly— that’s where it’ll end.

She stabs herself in the uterus, eyes fixed on her son. She falls and dies.

CHORUS CORAL Iacet perempta. vulneri immoritur manus 1040 Count your blessings you can’t see, ferrumque secum nimius eiecit cruor. Eddie. She killed herself. I’ve never seen so much blood … So much it pushed the knife right back out of her. Christ, the stench …

OEDIPUS EDDIE Fatidice te, te praesidem et veri deum Oh God ... Do you see this, God? I compello: solum debui fatis patrem; was fated to kill my father, and bis parricida plusque quam timui nocens now I’ve killed my mother too. matrem peremi: scelere confecta est meo. 1045 This is worse than I ever thought O Phoebe mendax, fata superavi impia. possible. Ain’t she dead because of pavitante gressu sequere pallentes vias; me? Because of what I did? God suspensa plantis efferens vestigia I’ve outdone Fate after all, huh? caecam tremente dextera noctem rege. Now I’m set to stumble down the ingredere praeceps, lubricos ponens gradus, 1050 treacherous road. I’ll rule with a i profuge vade— siste, ne in matrem incidas, trembling hand, blind and faltering quicumque fessi corpore et morbo graves in the mountain night. Come on, semianima trahitis pectora, en fugio exeo: let’s get movin’ … [Eddie

Main 46 relevate colla, mitior caeli status shambles forward and bumps into posterga sequitur: quisquis exilem iacens, 1055 Jo's corpse, and pauses] Not too animam retentat, vividos haustus levis quickly though. Don’t want to fall concipiat. ite, ferte depositis opem: on your mama. Things’ll be better mortifera mecum vitia terrarum extraho. when I leave. The sick will get violenta Fata et horridus Morbi tremor, better, and the wind will be Maciesque et atra Pestis et rabidus Dolor, 1060 sweeter. [To Coral] Even on your mecum ite, mecum, ducibus his uti libet. deathbed you’ll breathe better when I’m gone—I’m taking the sickness with me. The only thing left for y’all to do is heal. Violence. Disease. Decay. Plague. Pain. They’re my companions now, not yours. Thank God, they’re my companions now.

Eddie turns and stumbles out the door, leaving it open. After a beat, Coral rises from her bed, walks past Angel to the entryway, and shuts the door. Blackout.

DISCUSSION

Before discussing the translation and cultural implications of the scene, I must address some textual issues that affect the sense and thematic resonances of the passage. At 908, I have followed Boyle in accepting Bücheler’s reading of compede in place of comes or finis, which fits the meter and prevents a loss of cohesion that comes with Zwierlein’s proposed deletion of the line (Boyle 2011: 306 n. ad 908; Zwierlein 1986: 246). After Boyle, Sluiter, and Töchterle, I read solvenda non est in 942, as opposed to solvendo non es, accepted by Zwierlein (Boyle 2011: 326 n. ad. 942-5); reading solvenda as modifying Natura in 943 reflects the constant juxtaposition in the play between the realms of nature and the state. I prefer Zwierlein’s reading of certo in 987 to Boyle’s secto. certo reinforces the distinction between the surety of Fate and the uncertainty that the mortal characters of the tragedy express.

Main 47

I have consolidated the Chorus of Theban elders into a single character, an old woman named Coral. In a full translation of the play, Coral will begin the story in relatively good health for her extreme age; as the narrative progresses, her health begins to deteriorate, mirroring the urban and social decay of the state and tying it to biological deterioration. By the end of the play she is bedridden, until Eddie leaves and health begins to return to the body politic (and by extension its citizens). Coral’s language is affected by her age and health. Her dialect is somewhat thicker than the younger characters’, and her sentence structure is concise yet choppy, an indication of her failing strength. I juxtapose her age and infirmity with the youth of the messenger Angel, who remains onstage for the remainder of the scene, contrary to Kohn’s suggestion that the Messenger leaves after his report (2013: 45-6). The dichotomy between age and youth highlights the tragic past and future of Thebes, and their relationship to the events of the play.

Coral’s lack of mobility reflects the themes of the choral odes in this scene: the “Icarus

Ode” (882-914), which examines false security and moderation, and the “Fate Ode” (980-97), which asserts the indomitable nature of Fate. In the “Icarus Ode,” the Chorus draws parallels between Icarus’ story and that of Oedipus: both figures are bound by their own flaws and destinies, and both would have benefited from following a media via. Boyle rightly points out that this comparison is unhelpful, since Oedipus has taken as close to a media via as he possibly can (2011: 312). Like Eddie himself, Coral’s wellbeing is entirely dependent on circumstances outside her control, which have resulted in her being bound to her bed. The “Fate Ode” directly responds to and amends the ideas put forth in the previous choral speech. After the Messenger’s speech, the Chorus concedes absolute power to Fate. Coral here acknowledges the power of God

(who stands in for Fate in my translation) by giving herself over entirely to her infirmity. Until

Main 48 circumstances allow her to rise from her bed, there is a tension between her dread and her stoic acceptance of Fate. In this way, the staging reflects the tension between the lachrymose nature of

Seneca’s anapestic meter and the pensive nature of the ode.

The Messenger’s speech in this passage is remarkably vivid in its description of Oedipus’ self-blinding, exceeding Sophocles’ depiction in terms of blood and gore. Sophocles’ Messenger presents the scene thus:

ἀποσπάσας γὰρ εἱμάτων χρυσηλάτους περόνας ἀπ᾽ αὐτῆς, αἷσιν ἐξεστέλλετο, ἄρας ἔπαισεν ἄρθρα τῶν αὑτοῦ κύκλων, αὐδῶν τοιαῦθ᾽, ὁθούνεκ᾽ οὐκ ὄψοιντό νιν οὔθ᾽ οἷ᾽ ἔπασχεν οὔθ᾽ ὁποῖ᾽ ἔδρα κακά, ἀλλ᾽ ἐν σκότῳ τὸ λοιπὸν οὓς μὲν οὐκ ἔδει ὀψοίαθ᾽, οὓς δ᾽ ἔχρῃζεν οὐ γνωσοίατο. τοιαῦτ᾽ ἐφυμνῶν πολλάκις τε κοὐχ ἅπαξ ἤρασσ᾽ ἐπαίρων βλέφαρα. φοίνιαι δ᾽ ὁμοῦ γλῆναι γένει᾽ ἔτελλον, οὐδ᾽ ἀνίεσαν φόνου μυδώσας σταγόνας, ἀλλ᾽ ὁμοῦ μέλας ὄμβρος χαλάζης αἱματοῦς ἐτέγγετο. (1268-78, Finglass 2018: 152) For, having torn the golden pins from her clothes with which she decked herself, lifting them he struck the sockets of his eyes, uttering such things as these, that they would no longer look on him nor the ills such as he had done and suffered, but that he might look in darkness on those he should not have seen, and not know those he should have. Chanting such things, lifting his hands he struck his eyes, not once, but many times over. His bloody eyeballs soaked his beard with each blow, and sent forth not drops of thick gore but all together a black torrent of blood rained down like hail.

Sophocles’ rendition is certainly bloody, but not so detailed and visceral as Seneca’s. The fact that Seneca’s Oedipus uses his own hands to carve out his eyes emphasizes his raw frenzy. As a perpetrator of incest, his own body is the source of his ills and is hostile to and alienated from him. There is no need to bring in any external implements. Seneca’s language is excruciating in its depiction. The blood rains down in torrents as Oedipus excavates the eyes from his skull, and shredded bits of flesh hang from his face and nails. The vivid description of the gore in Seneca’s

Main 49 version is not gratuitous, but rather encourages the audience to draw their attention to the macabre and grotesque aspects of Oedipus’ self-blinding. The gory breakdown of bodily organs and systems emphasizes the fragility of the family unit and the state. Where the fabric of the city has been breaking down due to Oedipus’ crimes, he turns that destructive force on his own body and averts it from the rest of Thebes. The whole episode is composed of ring structure, framed by Oedipus’ tears and the tears of blood and intraocular fluid that fall from his eye sockets after his self-inflicted punishment (Mans 1984: 107). Seneca’s deliberate attention to the gruesome reality of Oedipus’ self-mutilation creates compelling parallels between this scene and the

American incest drama. This gory violence is, along with the decay and fragmentation of the body politic, a result of Oedipus’ and Jocasta’s relationship, as is programmatic within that genre, but it is also an attempted cure for the ills that have befallen Thebes because of their relationship. Seneca has already portrayed this kind of grotesquerie as a symptom of incest in the extispicium examined in the previous chapter.

Likewise, the horrifically detailed self-blinding is a consequence of Oedipus’ patricide and incestuous marriage. It is also, however, Oedipus’ attempt at a remedy for the plague and social disruption that have ravaged Thebes, the other symptoms of incest in society. Seneca’s audience, however, knows that this violent cure for violence will not be entirely effective.

Although the plague subsides, the events of Sophocles’ Antigone loom on the horizon, which indicate that Oedipus’ gruesome self-blinding cannot fix all Thebes’ problems; like Manto’s grotesque extispicium, it is ultimately another byproduct of his unnatural relationship with his mother.14 This kind of failure to mitigate all the consequences of incest is a common occurrence

14 For further discussion of the relationship between the extispicium and Oedipus’ self-blinding, see Busch 2007. Main 50 in American literature, as in August: Osage County and The Butterfly (in which it is established that no incest has taken place at all, yet the protagonist is still killed partly as a result of the initial perception of incest).

Like Oedipus’ self-mutilation, Jocasta’s suicide differs strikingly from Sophocles’ treatment. In the Greek play Jocasta hangs herself offstage. Seneca’s Jocasta is more visibly dynamic, stabbing herself in the uterus onstage after chastising her son for his misdeeds. The choice to have her kill herself onstage in this manner is compelling in a number of ways. The incest has unsexed Jocasta, as she kills herself in a masculine fashion by using her husband’s sword (Braund 2015: 65). This is reinforced by the fact that she stabs herself in the uterus (1038-

9 hunc, dextra, hunc pete / uterum capacem, qui virum et gnatos tulit). The violent penetration of her flesh by Oedipus’ (phallic) blade—the very weapon that he used to kill her first husband— mirrors the unnatural penetration by which Jocasta bore her children. The streams of blood that gush from the wound are so forceful that they push the blade back outside her body; the blade’s expulsion by nimius cruor (1041) represents that of Oedipus, which resulted ultimately from the mingling of intrafamilial blood. It also grotesquely mimics sexual intercourse and ejaculation.

Jocasta’s onstage suicide forces not merely the audience, but also Oedipus himself to bear witness to the gruesome reality of the situation in which the Thebans find themselves. Incest and its consequences are brought front and center by the very methods and circumstances of

Jocasta’s suicide.

Despite the intense domestication of my translation, I have left one instance of Oedipus’ name (1003 vultus Oedipodam hic decet) unchanged from the source text. Seneca’s tragic heroes are deeply concerned with identity and its self-construction, especially as they relate to his Greek source material (Fitch and McElduff 2002: 18-21). The blinded and devastated Oedipus is the

Main 51 final image with which Seneca leaves his spectators, and his blindness defines him as the culmination of all his misdeeds. Oedipus, by naming himself in conjunction with his self- mutilation, inextricably links his identity to his blindness, and so boils his character down to a single moment on the stage while simultaneously binding this version of the character to the greater literary tradition (Fitch and McElduff 2002: 24-7). Seneca employs this technique frequently in his corpus, as at Medea 910 Medea nunc sum; crevit ingenium malis. Seneca’s

Medea and Oedipus appear to have read the source material for their respective plays, and acknowledge the precedent that has been set for their characters.15 By allowing Eddie to speak the name of Oedipus in my translation, I have tied the character to Seneca’s use of his own source material.

15 Oedipus’ name occasionally puns on and may derive from οἶδα, “know,” which adds an etymological layer to the notion that the character Oedipus knows his role in his story (Fitch 2016: 330). Main 52

EPILOGUE: THE FUTURE OF THE PROJECT

I intend to pursue this translation project to completion in the near future. This will entail a translation of all 1061 lines from Latin into Appalachian English, following the modus operandi I have established in this abridged translation. I will organize such a translation for publication as a performable script. Although I have included the Latin text here, I do not intend to include it the final publication. I will, however, provide copious notes for use by readers, directors, and actors, so that they may be as informed as possible about the context of Seneca’s play as they approach my translation.

Ultimately, this project is geared towards students who have no Latin. The intended audience of my published translation is young adults, high school and college age, within

Appalachia and beyond. For high school and undergraduate students, previous exposure to

Classics may be minimal, especially in areas with low public funding for education.16 Students’ limited exposure to ancient literature is often in the form of traditional literary translation. These translations not only form a nexus between the ancient and modern worlds, but also constitute stand-alone pieces in their own right (Shorrock 2004: 439-40). As such, students receive these translations differently, depending on their diction and goals, and the overall presentation of text.

Commonly taught translators of classical texts, such as Fagles and Lattimore, tend to utilize an elevated register of language. These translations are usually written in verse and can often sound archaic and unnatural to modern audiences; while these translations are influential and beautiful pieces in their own right, they have the potential to alienate students and present

16 Appalachia continues to lag behind most of the country in education by most metrics (Schwartz 2020) and has some of the lowest education budgets in the nation—West Virginia, for example approved only $93,218,420 for use in public education in 2020 (Hanshaw and Miley 2019: 37). Very little of that money was set aside for arts and humanities programs. Main 53

Classics as a lofty and inaccessible discipline. By localizing my translation to Appalachia and focusing on naturalistic speech, I hope to make the text more relatable to Appalachian audiences, thereby helping to bridge the gap between contemporary American students and Roman literature.

Localized texts of this sort have been successful before. In Hawai‘i, Pidgin adaptations like James Benton’s Twelf Nite, O’ Wateva! have been tremendously popular and effective teaching tools, due in large part to the vitality and relatability of the language (Carroll and

Carroll 1976: 66-8); Twelf Nite has been an audience favorite both in and outside Hawai‘i for over forty years. Translations of ancient texts focusing on African American Vernacular English and hip-hop, such as Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq (2015) and Dr. Brandon Bourgeois’s Hype4Homer

Project, have also been extremely successful in engaging some targeted audiences with classical literature, while connecting ancient literature to uniquely American modes of communication and artistic traditions. In the same vein my translation is intended to provide Appalachian students with a window into Roman culture, and students outside Appalachia with a snapshot of a misunderstood region and its language.

To that end my translation is intended to be either read aloud or performed. Whether or not Seneca’s tragedies were staged in his lifetime remains a matter of debate. Drama thrived in

Seneca’s Rome (Boyle 2006: 176-82), and so it is not unlikely that his plays enjoyed some sort of public performance, either recited or mounted as full productions. Regardless, drama is an audiovisual art form, and my translation should be received as such. This way, readers and spectators may understand my translation as part of a greater theatrical tradition, as well as appreciate the aural qualities of Appalachian English. The greatest potential barrier to staging

Oedipus is the extispicium in 291-402, which has been touted as evidence that Seneca’s tragedies

Main 54 could not have been performed—there are, of course, alternatives to literally gutting cattle on stage (Kohn 2013: 37-8). I leave the details of staging this scene up to a director. The flexibility of theater provides countless means of interpreting and presenting text. The Appalachian

Oedipus should exploit this versatility by merging Roman and Appalachian cultures in artistic productions.

Main 55

WORKS CITED

Ahl, F. 1985. Metaformations: Soundplay and Wordplay in Ovid and Other Classical Poets.

Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Appalachian Regional Commission. 2020. The Appalachian Region. Washington, D.C.

Barnes, D. 1962. The Antiphon. New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy.

Barnes, D. 1995. A Passion Play. Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press.

Bassnett, S. and A. Lefevere. 1990. “Introduction: Proust’s Grandmother and the Thousand and

One Nights. The ‘Cultural Turn’ in Translation Studies.” In S. Bassnett and A. Lefevere

(eds.) Translation, History, and Culture. London: Pinter Publishers. 1-13.

Boyce, R.L. 2010. “Invasive Shrubs in Kentucky.” Northeastern Naturalist 17: 1-36.

Boyle, A.J. 2006. An Introduction to Roman Tragedy. New York: Routledge.

Boyle, A.J. 2011. Seneca: Oedipus. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Braund, S. 2016. Seneca: Oedipus. London: Bloomsbury.

Briggs, K. 2017. This Little Art. London: Fitzcarraldo Editions.

Burriss, E.E. 1936. “The Terminology of Witchcraft.” Classical Philology 31: 137–45.

Busch, A. 2007. “‘Versane Natura Est’? Natural and Linguistic Instability in the Extispicium and

Self-Blinding of Seneca’s Oedipus.” The Classical Journal 102: 225-67.

Carmignani, P. 1990. “Olfaction in Faulkner’s Fiction.” The Mississippi Quarterly 43: 305-15.

Carroll, D. and E. Carroll. 1976. “Hawaiian Pidgin Theatre.” Educational Theatre Journal 28:

56-68.

Main 56

Cotsell, M. 2005. The Theater of Trauma: American Modernist Drama and the Psychological

Struggle for the American Mind, 1900-1930. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.

Cramer, J. 2018. “Perceptions of Appalachian English in Kentucky.” Journal of Appalachian

Studies 24: 45-71.

Davis, P.J. 1991. “Fate and Human Responsibility in Seneca’s Oedipus.” Latomus 50: 150-63.

Dowd, G.E. 1992. A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745-

1815. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Finglass, P. 2018. Sophocles: Oedipus the King. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fitch, J. 2015. “Speaking Names in Senecan Drama.” In P. Mitsis and Ioannis Ziogas (eds.)

Wordplay and Powerplay in Latin Poetry. Berlin: De Gruyter. 313-32.

Fitch, J. and S. McElduff. 2002. “Construction of the Self in Senecan Drama.” Mnemosyne 55:

18-40.

Gabriel, T. 2 January 2013. “Feeling Dragged Through the Mud, as MTV Comes to West

Virginia.” The New York Times.

Gardner-Chloros, P. 1983. “Code-Switching: Approches principales et perspectives.” La

Linguistique 19: 21-53.

Garrod, H.W. 1911. “Seneca Tragoedus Again.” Classical Quarterly 5: 209-19.

Goodenough, E.R. 1969. By Light, Light: The Mystic Gospel of Hellenistic Judaism. Amsterdam:

Philo Press.

Hanshaw, G. and T. Miley. 2019. Committee Substitute for House Bill 2020. Charleston: West

Virginia Legislature.

Main 57

Harkins, A. 2015. “Colonels, Hillbillies, and Fightin’: Twentieth-Century Kentucky in the

National Imagination.” The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 113: 421-52.

Hayden, K. 2013. “Inbred Horror: Degeneracy, Revulsion, and Fear of the Rural Community.”

In Gregory M. Fulkerson and Alexander R. Thomas (eds.) Studies in Urbanormativity:

Rural Community in Urban Society. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. 161-83.

Henry, M.A. 2012. The Simpsons, Satire, and American Culture. New York: Palgrave

MacMillan.

House, S. 2015. “The Forbidden Gods.” In Adrian Blevins and Karen Salyer McElmurray (eds.)

Walk Till the Dogs Get Mean: Meditations on the Forbidden in Contemporary

Appalachia. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. 3-10.

Humphries, R.A. 2015. “Religion in Southern Appalachia.” In S.E. Keefe (ed.) Appalachian

Mental Health. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. 36-51.

Jackson, S.E. 1975. “Unusual Words, Expressions, and Pronunciations in a North Carolina

Mountain Community.” Appalachian Journal 2: 148-60.

Jones, A. 2008. Interview with Paul Hyett for “The Darker Depths of The Descent 2.” Fangoria.

Dallas: Cinestate.

Kohn, T. 2013. The Dramaturgy of Senecan Tragedy. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Kobak, S.E. 2012. “OxyContin Flood in the Coalfields: ‘Searching for Higher Ground.’” In S.L.

Fisher and B.E. Smith (eds.) Transforming Places: Lessons from Appalachia.

Champaign: University of Illinois Press. 198-209.

Lankford, G.E. 1999. “Shawnee Convergence: Immigrant Indians in the Ozarks.” The Arkansas

Historical Quarterly 58: 390-413.

Main 58

Leonard, B. 1973. “Appendix.” In P. Gillespie (ed.) Foxfire 7. New York: Anchor Books.

Letts, T. 2009. August: Osage County. New York: Dramatists Play Service.

Luhman, R. 1990. “Appalachian English Stereotypes: Language Attitudes in Kentucky.”

Language in Society 19: 331-48.

Mans, M.J. 1984. “The Macabre in Seneca’s Tragedies.” Acta Classica 27: 101-19.

Massey, C. 2007. “Appalachian Stereotypes: Cultural History, Gender, and Sexual Rhetoric.”

Journal of Appalachian Studies 13: 124-36.

McQuerry, M.D. 1979. “Some Terms of Evangelical Christianity.” American Speech 54: 148-51.

Meltzer, G. 1988. “Dark Wit and Black Humor in Seneca’s Thyestes.” Transactions of the

American Philological Association 118: 309-30.

Montgomery, M. 2006. “It’ll Kill Ye, or Cure Ye, One: The History and Function of Alternative

One.” In T.E. Murray and B.L. Simon (eds.) Language Variation and Change in the

American Midlands: A New Look at “Heartland” English. Philadelphia: John Benjamins

Publishing. 163-74.

Montgomery, M. 2000. “The Idea of Appalachian Isolation.” Appalachian Heritage 28: 20-31.

National Park Service. 2017. Blue Ridge Parkway Bloom Calendar. United States Department of

the Interior.

Nida, E. 1964. “Principles of Correspondence.” In Venuti 2012: 141-55.

Nida, E. and C. Taber. 1982. The Theory and Practice of Translation. Leiden: Brill.

Parsons, D. 2003. Djuna Barnes. Plymouth (UK): Northcote House Publishers.

Portelli, A. 1988. “Appalachia as Science Fiction.” Appalachian Journal 16: 32–43.

Main 59

Richards, J. 2019. Backwood Witchcraft: Conjure & Folk Magic from Appalachia. Newburyport,

MA: Weiser Books.

Schleiermacher, F. 1815. “On the Different Methods of Translating.” In Venuti 2012: 43-63.

Schwartz, J.H. 2020. “Executive Summary.” Development and Progress of the Appalachian

Higher Education Network. Washington, D.C.: Appalachian Regional Commission.

Seleskovitch, D. 1987. “Context-Free Language and Sense in Translation.” In W. Lörscher and

R. Schulze (eds.) Perspectives on Language in Performance: Studies in Linguistics,

Literary Criticism, and Language Teaching and Learning. Tübingen: Gunter Narr

Verlag. 441-6.

Shorrock, R. 2004. “The Values of Translation: Contestation and Creativity in Homer’s English

‘Iliads.’” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 10: 438-53.

Silver, T. 2007. “The ‘Deliverance’ Effect.” Environmental History 12: 369-71.

Slater, R. 1994. “The Novelist’s Use of Dialect.” The Gaskell Society Journal 8: 87-97.

Sluiter, T.H. 1941. L. Annaei Senecae Oedipus. Groningen: M. De Waal.

Star, C. 2006. “Commanding Constantia in Senecan Tragedy.” Transactions of the American

Philological Association 136: 207-44.

Stein, G. 1922. Geography and Plays. Boston: The Four Seas Company.

Thompson, D.B. 1937. “The Garden of Hephaistos.” Hesperia: The Journal of the American

School of Classical Studies at Athens 6: 396-425.

Töchterle, K. 1994. Oedipus. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter.

Main 60

United States Geological Survey. 1980. Feature Detail Report for Mount Mitchell. United States

Department of the Interior.

Van Eerden, J. 2015. “Walk Till the Dogs Get Mean.” In A. Blevins and K. Salyer McElmurray

(eds.) Walk Till the Dogs Get Mean: Meditations on the Forbidden in Contemporary

Appalachia. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. 23-9.

Van Rys, J. 1995. “Reclaiming Marginalia: The Grotesque and the Christian Reader.”

Christianity and Literature 44: 345-57.

Venuti, L. 1995. The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. New York: Routledge.

Venuti, L. 2012. The Translation Studies Reader. New York: Routledge.

Wigginton, E. 1972. “Snake Lore.” In E. Wigginton (ed.) The Foxfire Book. New York: Anchor

Books.

Williams, C.G. 1981. Tongues of the Spirit: A Study of Pentecostal Glossolalia and Related

Phenomena. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.

Wilson, D. 1973. “Boogers, Witches, and Haints.” In E. Wigginton (ed.) Foxfire 2. New York:

Anchor Books. 324-61.

Wilson, E.R. 2014. Greatest Empire: A Life of Seneca. New York: Oxford University Press.

Wolfram, W. and D. Christian. 1976. Appalachian Speech. Arlington, VA: Center for Applied

Linguistics.

Wolfram, W. 1988. “Reconsidering the Semantics of A-Prefixing.” American Speech 63: 247-53.

York, A. and S. Rubin. 2018. Hillbilly. Los Angeles: Holler Home Productions.

Main 61

Young, V.A. 2009. “‘Nah, We Straight’: An Argument Against Code Switching.” Journal of

Advanced Composition 29: 49-76.

Zwierlein, O. 1986. L. Annaei Senecae Tragoediae. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Main 62