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Seneca's Conception of Anger in the Work of the Jesuit Playwright Karel Kolčava

Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2014

Abstract

Emotions and passions, especially the negative ones, played a major role in Seneca's writing: the anger became the object of his philosophical treatise De ira and prevailed also in his tragedies. Seneca was probably the most important model for jesuit playwrigts which implies the question how these authors worked with his conception of anger and rage as destructive emotions, in which measure they took it over or changed it.

Jesuit playwrights are represented here by Karel Kolčava whose plays are the only ones published as collected works during his life. In addition, there are (also published) Kolčava's didactic letters, which gives us the opportunity to compare his theoretical view of anger with the Seneca's one in the first part of the article.

The realization of these conceptions is then observed on a few examples taken from the respective plays of both authors. Finally a special attention is paid to female characters in rage who are so important in Seneca's tragedies and who can be found in Kolčava's plays although women were not welcome on the jesuit stage even as characters.