RETROSPECTIVE READING IN SENECAN TRAGEDY

Conclusions matter in Senecan prose and poetry. At the conclusion of his epistles, Seneca often includes an unexpected quote or alters his subject-matter in a surprising manner—a technique that Fowler has helpfully classified as an example of ‘Romantic Irony’ in the vein of Heine or selected Horatian odes. His dialogues display a similar penchant for such endings, e.g. the post-mortem speech of Cremutius Cordus to his daughter, Marcia, in the finale of the Consolatio ad Marciam (Dial. 6.26.2-7). Seneca's tragedies likewise conclude in a beguiling fashion, ‘Part of the dramatic force of the Senecan ending is its avoidance of any note of easy resolution; it serves rather to sharpen and/or problematize the central issues of the particular play.’ As a way to further encourage the reader to question or recognize major themes of the play, Seneca's conclusions feature an intertext that casts these themes in a different light or elicits metapoetic commentary. These intertexts stress ideas and language important to the particular play, especially those found in the prologue, in order to create a type of ring-composition to the tragedy as a whole. This paper investigates these intertexts and indicates not only how they operate on an inter/intratextual level, but also why Seneca would think of the texts that he does at the conclusion of his tragedies. Seneca looks back to some of his major literary influences at the conclusions of his plays (Ovid, Horace, and Virgil unsurprisingly; Seneca the Elder perhaps more surprisingly), which reveals that these moments are diagnostic of his intertextual method in general. The larger situational or generic context of the sources shade the words uttered by Senecan protagonists, but Seneca stresses the tragic impact of such intertextual echoes again and again; Seneca tragicus surely is a pessimistic reader of the Augustan tradition. The reiteration of similar language and imagery throughout the play ‘primes’ the reader to recognize the intertext at the play's conclusion—thus intratextual repetitions signpost the intertextual reference. Seneca wants these references to be noticed; he promotes a retrospective reading technique in which these intertexts recast language and themes found earlier in the play, now vis-à-vis the literary and rhetorical source material. In creating such dense verbal connections, he encourages further contemplation of the major motifs of the tragedies and inherently endorses the position of his plays as ‘open’ texts that beg for further supplementation by further reading and rereading, again and again.