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The Language of Tragedy: a Study of Inherent Performativity in the Dialogue of Seneca's Thyestes Michael Hoffman

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The Language of Tragedy: a Study of Inherent Performativity in the Dialogue of Seneca's Thyestes Michael Hoffman Florida State University Libraries Honors Theses The Division of Undergraduate Studies 2011 The Language of Tragedy: A Study of Inherent Performativity in the Dialogue of Seneca's Thyestes Michael Hoffman Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] Hoffman 1 Abstract Keywords: Performativity, iambic trimeter, Seneca. No good stylistic analysis of the dialogue of Senecan tragedy has been produced for any of Seneca‘s plays. This paper begins by providing a metrical breakdown of the iambic trimeter used in Senecan tragedy and, specifically, in the Thyestes and continues in later chapters to discuss conclusions drawn from this analysis. The general conclusion is that Seneca‘s iambic trimeter revolves around a matriculated pattern of metrical feet but often branches off from this pattern to create a multitude of variations. These variations are examined to see whether their presence corresponds with especial moments of performativity within the text, and the result is that they generally do. Other stylistic features are then discussed, such as line-breaks between speakers during stichomythic sections of the Thyestes. In general this paper demonstrates how Seneca‘s Thyestes is well-suited to oral performance, due to the interplay between its aurally significant stylistic features and the subject matter they express. Hoffman 2 THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES THE LANGUAGE OF TRAGEDY: A STUDY OF INHERENT PERFORMATIVITY IN THE DIALOGUE OF SENECA‘S THYESTES By MICHAEL J. HOFFMAN A Thesis submitted to the Department of Classics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation with Honors in the Major Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2011 Hoffman 3 The members of the Defense Committee approve the thesis of Michael J. Hoffman defended on April 15, 2011. ______________________________ Dr. Timothy Stover Thesis Director ______________________________ Dr. Natalya Baldyga Outside Committee Member ______________________________ Dr. Laurel Fulkerson Committee Member Hoffman 4 Table of Contents Introduction.....................................................................................................................................5 Chapter One: Seneca‘s Iambic Trimeter........................................................................................10 Chapter Two: Two-Substitution Lines...........................................................................................22 Chapter Three: Three- and Four-Substitution Lines......................................................................38 Chapter Four: Extended Periods of Resolved Syllables................................................................47 Chapter Five: Speaker-Change Ratios...........................................................................................57 Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................69 Appendix.......................................................................................................................................71 Bibliography..................................................................................................................................73 Hoffman 5 Introduction The subject of Senecan tragedy immediately raises the question of whether or not the plays were written to be performed. Many scholars have considered this question and argued convincingly for both sides, though recently most have begun to write more and more in support of performance.1 Despite this movement, no true consensus has ever been reached, and the debate rages on without a solution or much headway in either direction. The truth probably rests somewhere between the two sides, as Fitch suggests,2 and I have taken this particular view with me to the texts. I would not say that the issue of whether the plays were performed in their time is entirely irrelevant, but I have come to believe that this issue will likely never be resolved because there is simply not enough evidence. As such, I will attempt to engage with the argument of performance as little as possible in my discussion. However, what I do not believe anyone can argue against is that the plays were written to be spoken, as were all ancient texts. In the case of Senecan tragedy, perhaps this declamation occurred in theatres, or maybe it was conducted in recital halls. The fact remains that the plays are highly rhetorical works of auditory art whose language, poetry, and style were not scribbled in the course of an afternoon by a wealthy statesman, grown bored with political life.3 Their elements reveal a craft and precision that bespeaks a careful, systematic poet for whom strict poetic structures and baroque rhetorical games constituted high art. Indeed, the most important and overarching discovery of my research has been that Seneca crafted his plays with remarkable 1 Boyle, Tragic Seneca; Harrison, ed., Seneca in Performance 2 Fitch, ―Playing Seneca?‖ 3 Boyle, Tragic Seneca, 9 Hoffman 6 care. By this I mean that everything, from the metrical patterns to the vocabulary to the flow of dialogue between characters, has been wrought carefully, with a great eye to detail and a strong understanding of how various stylistic features contribute to the play as a whole. From this discovery I developed the idea of looking at Seneca‘s Thyestes as a performative text. I do not mean to suggest that the Thyestes was a staged text but merely that written into the structure of the play are moments in which the stylistic elements of the work combine with the action occurring to create a strong effect in performance. Of course all Roman writing—and particularly poetry—contains attributes that lend extra meaning to their subject matter in oral performance and was likely spoken aloud even in private readings. Thus, my argument is not that other texts lack noteworthy aural stylistic traits indicative of orality but rather that Seneca‘s plays also contain such attributes, which I have labeled markers of performativity. For the purpose of this project, I have defined aspects of the Thyestes as performative when they suggest some immediate action, convey emotion, or mark the location of a rhetorical ornament. Any combination of these traits may exist within a line or passage that I deem performative, and it is common to find that all three may occur to varying degrees at once. I have chosen to use the term performative for various reasons, not the least of which is the paucity of a vocabulary for such concepts. Indeed, although the orality of Classical texts is often discussed, no good term for aurally significant stylistic features has been coined, and I thus decided to bring into focus their role as aids of performance. Again, remember that I have stepped away from the debate on Senecan staging; I am merely discussing its performance. This performance could be a fully realized stage production, a recitatio, or anything in between these two extremes. Any of these scenarios would involve at least one person reciting the text in meter Hoffman 7 in front of a collection of other people, and in truth that is all that is needed for a performance. The features of the Thyestes that I will be highlighting are purely auditory selections and require nothing more than recitation to bring them to life. I hope to show that the metrical and stylistic elements of the Thyestes enrich the play as a whole and create a living backdrop to the words used in the text, providing commentary and adding potency to particularly important moments. I discovered almost immediately as I began my research that very little work had been done on the particular metrical and stylistic features of Seneca‘s tragedies,4 and so I decided that I would produce the lacking research by working through the 767 lines of iambic trimeter that comprise the non-choral portions of the Thyestes. During this process, I marked various metrical and stylistic features which could add to an argument for performativity. I did not make any attempt to expand this survey to the choral odes or to Thyestes‘ monody in act five because these sections have been much more extensively and effectively researched by other scholars and are less in need of scrutiny.5 In addition, I feel that although performativity may well have been written into the odic sections of the play, these sections imply a very different type of performance. Fitch suggests as much and claims that each of these different styles of writing is ―appropriate to its own dramatic context,‖ as surely can be expected. 6 It seems logical that any attempt at mapping, defining, and considering the style of either of these portions of the play must be specific and idiosyncratic to that portion, and thus I have included only the lines of iambic trimeter in this study. I chose the Thyestes for a variety of reasons. First of all, it seemed wise to begin an examination of Seneca‘s intentionally performative language with one of the texts that previous 4 Tarrant, Thyestes, 25 5 Davis, Shifting Songs; Fitch, Seneca’s Anapaests 6 Fitch, Seneca’s Anapaests, 69 Hoffman 8 scholars have found to be particularly fitted to the stage.7 Secondly, I was attracted by the Thyestes’ higher frequency of speaker-changes and sense pauses because such aspects seemed to imply a greater diversity of stylistic structures in the play.8 Furthermore, there seemed to be a good deal of research already addressing a large number of
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