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About face : an inverse archaeology of Ep.115
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Rimell, Victoria (2022) About face : an inverse archaeology of Ep.115. Lucius annaeus seneca, 2 . pp. 225-252. doi:10.13133/2785-2849/ ISSN 2785-2849.
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.13133/2785-2849/
Abstract
This essay considers Ep. 115, after Ep. 114, as a culminating chapter in Seneca’s exploration of how to interpret the interplay between soul (animus) and appearance (facies, uultus). In response to this letter – an affectively intense phenomenon that presumes and invites inter-relation – I experiment in setting Seneca’s juxtapositions of face-to-face encounters in poetic citations (Virgil, Ovid, Euripides) alongside psychologist Silvan Tomkins’ work on faciality and its reception in psychotherapy, affect theory and theories of ‘surface reading’ in literary studies and in classical reception. Reading the language of the face is complicated and put under pressure in Seneca by the distinctivenessand bodily nature of different emotions, and by the notion that masking is a form of political resistance or even philosophical virtue. The letter’s jarring texture, faceless author and ‘inverse archaeology’ of the soul as itself a facies, draw attention to what is lost, in human terms, when faces become unreadable. Seneca offers neither a timeless, sensuous spur for ‘surface reading’, nor an easy antidote to the hermeneutics of suspicion.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||
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Subjects: | P Language and Literature > PA Classical philology P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) |
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Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > Classics and Ancient History | ||||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, approximately 4 B.C.-65 A.D., Human behavior in literature, Face in literature | ||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Lucius annaeus seneca | ||||||
Publisher: | Sapienza University of Rome | ||||||
ISSN: | 2785-2849 | ||||||
Official Date: | 28 November 2022 | ||||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 2 | ||||||
Page Range: | pp. 225-252 | ||||||
DOI: | 10.13133/2785-2849/ | ||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 8 August 2022 | ||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 15 December 2022 | ||||||
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