Document Type

Book Review

Publication Date

9-1991

Publication Title

The Classical World

Volume

85

Issue

1

Pages

63-64

Publisher Name

Johns Hopkins University Press

Abstract

This is a difficult book, at times distracting in style and organization and at others brimming with original insights. The dust-cover announces a double goal: to explore stoic cosmology in the tragedies of Seneca and to relate these dramas to subsequent European theater. The book is in two parts. The first, perplexingly entitled "The Canon at Risk" (what canon? what risk?), reviews earlier studies of stoicism in the plays of Seneca, while the second analyzes in the tragedies themselves elements of stoic cosmology such as sumpatheia, krasis, and ekpyrosis. Rosenmeyer provides a needed balance to earlier studies that have focused almost exclusively on stoic ethics and psychology, and his often acute analyses of cosmological passages in the dramas succeed in illuminating the character and Weltanschauung of Senecan tragedy.

Comments

Author Posting. © Classical Association of the Atlantic States, 1991. This article is posted by permission of the Classical Association of the Atlantic States for personal use, not for redistribution. It was published in The Classical World, Volume 85, Issue 1, Sept.-Oct., 1991. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/4351002

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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