Seneca was not only Rome's major Stoic philosopher. He was its great tragic playwright. Classics of Latin literature, Seneca's dramas also inspired the revival of tragic theater in the Renaissance. They served as models for Shakespeare, Kyd, Racine, Corneille, and Calderon.
Dana Gioia's new book provides two ways of approaching Seneca-the critical and the creative. The book begins with a compelling account of Seneca's remarkable life in Imperial Rome. It interweaves the Stoic's roles as philosopher, politician, and playwright. There is no better introduction to this influential and often misunderstood genius of Classical culture.
Gioia then offers a vivid poetic translation of Seneca's powerful tragedy, The Madness of Hercules. This violent and visionary play explores the utmost extremes of human suffering expressed in passionate language. It also contains a spellbinding descent into the Underworld, an account that haunted later poets from Dante to Eliot.
Seneca was not only Rome's major Stoic philosopher. He was its great tragic playwright. Classics of Latin literature, Seneca's dramas also inspired the revival of tragic theater in the Renaissance. They served as models for Shakespeare, Kyd, Racine, Corneille, and Calderon.
Dana Gioia's new book provides two ways of approaching Seneca-the critical and the creative. The book begins with a compelling account of Seneca's remarkable life in Imperial Rome. It interweaves the Stoic's roles as philosopher, politician, and playwright. There is no better introduction to this influential and often misunderstood genius of Classical culture.
Gioia then offers a vivid poetic translation of Seneca's powerful tragedy, The Madness of Hercules. This violent and visionary play explores the utmost extremes of human suffering expressed in passionate language. It also contains a spellbinding descent into the Underworld, an account that haunted later poets from Dante to Eliot.
Former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, and Poet
Laureate of California, Dana Gioia is an internationally acclaimed
award-winning poet and Critic. Gioia has been the recipient of ten
honorary degrees.
Gioia has published five full-length collections of poetry, as
well as eight chapbooks. His poetry collection, Interrogations at
Noon, won the 2002 American Book Award. An influential critic as
well, Gioia's 1991 volume Can Poetry Matter?, which was a finalist
for the National Book Critics Circle award, is credited with
helping to revive the role of poetry in American public culture. He
has won numerous awards, including the 2010 Laetare Medal from
Notre Dame. His most recent collection of poetry, Meet Me at the
Lighthouse, was released in February.
Former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, and Poet
Laureate of California, Dana Gioia is an internationally acclaimed
award-winning poet and Critic. Gioia has been the recipient of ten
honorary degrees.
Gioia has published five full-length collections of poetry, as
well as eight chapbooks. His poetry collection, Interrogations at
Noon, won the 2002 American Book Award. An influential critic as
well, Gioia's 1991 volume Can Poetry Matter?, which was a finalist
for the National Book Critics Circle award, is credited with
helping to revive the role of poetry in American public culture. He
has won numerous awards, including the 2010 Laetare Medal from
Notre Dame. His most recent collection of poetry, Meet Me at the
Lighthouse, was released in February.
"Dana Gioia's Hercules Furens is a poetic and critical tour de force. By giving us a translation as graceful, vivid, and natural as the original must have been, he paradoxically brings out its essential strangeness to our sensibility. His poetry makes it a sort of dark existentialist Bunraku theater, an allegory of the horrors of Nero's Rome and perhaps a warning to us today. His coinage of the term 'lyric tragedy, ' connecting the play with the birth of opera fifteen hundred years later, aptly notes that strangeness."-Frederick Turner, Founders Professor of Arts and Humanities at the University of Texas at Dallas, author of the epic poems Genesis and The New World "Gioia is . . . probably the most exquisite poet writing in English today."-William Oxley, author of A Map of Time and many others
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