Seneca and Shakespeare

Shakespeare: Titus Andronicus

In Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare's first tragedy, the fragmentation of sacrificed and mutilated bodies gives rise to a polyphony of dismemberment. Over the course of these six lectures, Andrew Zurcher explores how Shakespeare figures the fragmentation of flesh and limb; of literary sources and philosophical systems; of language and rhetoric; and of the genre of tragedy itself. Shakespeare's brash and violent play emerges from these lectures as a trenchant satire of time-honoured tragic conventions, a relentless critique of any attempt to dignify and aestheticise spectacles of violence.

Seneca and Shakespeare

In the first lecture, Zurcher epxlores the relationship between Shakespeare's play and the moral philosophical legacy of Senecan stoicism.