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Women Skilled in Speaking: Gender, Identity, and Rhetoric in Senecan Tragedy
Wahlgren, Savannah Rose
Wahlgren, Savannah Rose
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Abstract
This thesis explores the ways in which the female characters of Seneca’s tragedies utilize social identities, particularly that of the mother, as a part of their rhetorical strategy. In the first chapter, I examine Seneca’s Phoenissae and explore how Seneca presents the characters of Oedipus and Jocasta in relation to the roles of the paterfamilias and materfamilias respectively. I argue that Oedipus’ denial of the responsibility of paterfamilias in the first half of the tragedy functions to emphasize Jocasta’s insistence on her identity of materfamilias that is shown in her rhetorical speech to her sons. My second chapter focuses on the agon of Ulysses and Andromache in Seneca’s Troades. By comparing Andromache’s asides to her public speeches to Ulysses, I examine how Seneca contrasts Andromache’s private struggle between the identities and obligations of mother and wife with her public, rhetorical use of the identities of mother and Trojan as the agon progresses. Finally, in the third chapter, I turn to the agon of Creon and Medea in Seneca’s Medea. I argue that Seneca stages this scene as a Roman political agon. In this scene, Medea attempts to portray herself in the masculine roles of an orator and a ruler, but upon the failure of those rhetorical strategies, she must present herself as a mother to be most persuasive. This research contributes to our understanding of how Seneca explores the relationship between gender and rhetoric both within the genre of tragedy and in light of the influence of Roman culture.
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2025-08-31
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University of Kansas
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Classical studies, Classical literature, Gender, Seneca, Senecan tragedy, Tragedy, Women in antiquity