Seneca's Tragedies and their Reception in the Jesuit School Theatre of the Bohemian Province in the 17th and 18th Centuries (1623-1773)

Seneca's Tragedies and their Reception in the Jesuit School Theatre of the Bohemian Province in the 17th and 18th Centuries (1623-1773) Eva Popelková Abstract The study of the reception of Seneca's tragedies in the Jesuit School theatre in the Bohemian province is focused on three aspects: the description of the mechanism and the expression of passions; the pedagogical issue linked to the figure of a tyrant, with an emphasis on female characters; and the image of pagan gods. The research is based on a comparison of Senecan tragedies and school plays from the Society of Jesus. The corpus consists of three parts: the printed plays of Carolus Kolczawa; the plays of Arnoldus Engel, both staged and intended for publication; and the plays devoted to John of Nepomuk, the emblematic saint of the Czech baroque period, which were not to be published. The analyses are preceded by an overview of the Senecan reception in the Early Modern Europe, the presentation of the Jesuit context and the studied corpus. Keywords Seneca, reception, Jesuit theatre, School theatre, Neo-Latin literature, Bohemian province, 17th century, 18th centur