Overview

Ahl's translations of three Senecan tragedies will gratify and challenge readers and performers. With stage performance specifically in mind, Ahl renders Seneca's dramatic force in a modern idiom and style that move easily between formality and colloquialism as the text demands, and he strives to reproduce the richness of the original Latin, to retain the poetic form, images, wordplays, enigmas, paradoxes, and dark humor of Seneca's tragedies. In this powerful and imaginative translation of Medea, Frederick Ahl retains the compelling effects of the monologues, as well as the special feeling and pacing of Seneca's choruses.

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Reviews

Frederick Ahl's ... notably intelligent translations ... are especially alert to the theatricality of Seneca's speech and the nervous energy of his pointed style. -Bryn Mawr Classical Review In addition to proffering such supplementary information as is commonly found in translations aimed at the general public, Ahl argues that the Senecan tragedies were written for production...As for the translations themselves, they are excellent. They convey an impression of the Senecan poetic style rather than make an attempt to imitate it. Most important, the language is such that it can be clearly articulated and rendered at once comprehensible to an audience. Ahl rightly finds the style and texture of each play different and reflects such a difference in his translations. ~Classical World (Spring 1988) Ahl's translations reveal a genuine, imaginative response to the playwright. His work has a coherent dramatic shape and the quality of lyrical fantasy characteristic of Senecan language. I do not think a translator can come closer to being 'Senecan.' ~Eleanor Winsor Leach, Department of Classical Studies, Indiana University

Frederick Ahl's . . . notably intelligent translations . . . are especially alert to the theatricality of Seneca's speech and the nervous energy of his pointed style. -Bryn Mawr Classical Review

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