O Discurso Senequiano e a caracterização da personagem trágica

Abstract

The language used by Seneca in his tragedies reveals a great versatility in dealing with rhetoric resources. Product of an age when excellence was chiefly given to the application of decorative elements in the poetic text composition, acquainted with the prevailing precepts in the “schools of rhetoricians”, learned and sensible, Seneca wrote tragic plays specially designed to be read and was deeply concerned about shaping the literary discourse. Through it and making use of the phonic elements of the text, the poetical rhythms, the semantic contents of the words, the syntactic structure of clauses and the figures of style, he built the characters and emphasized their features. Hecuba, the central dramatis persona of Trojan women, is a typical example of dramatic construction whose defining traces of personality are known not only by means of what she says but also by how she says it