벤 존슨의 『세제이너스』에 나타난 반(反)아리스토텔레스적 비극관: 권력의 올무에 갇힌 수인(囚人)들
Jonson’s Sejanus as a Non-Aristotelian Tragedy: Political Puppets Trapped in the Snare of Power
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Jonson’s Sejanus employs ancient Rome as its historical backdrop as with Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, but it gives the audience psychological effect which is starkly different from Shakespeare’s tragedies. Whilst Shakespeare’s tragedy produces catharsis through terror and sympathy, Jonson’s tragedy asks the audience to engage in intellectual reasoning through irony and satire. This Jonsonian trait is closely related to Brecht’s anti-Aristotelian concept of tragedy and his so-called verfremdungseffect. By adopting this Brechtian aesthetics of epic theatre as critical methodology, this essay aims to analyse how Sejanus distances the audience from its protagonists and how it invites us to reinterpret its surface meaning. As a consequence, it will be argued that we identify Tiberius’s Machiavellian masquerade as an essential political technique to maintain his corrupt power and that we recognize the demoralized civic virtue gives no other alternative to Roman politics but an apocalyptic doomsday.
Abstract
Jonson’s Sejanus employs ancient Rome as its historical backdrop as with Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, but it gives the audience psychological effect which is starkly different from Shakespeare’s tragedies. Whilst Shakespeare’s tragedy produces catharsis through terror and sympathy, Jonson’s tragedy asks the audience to engage in intellectual reasoning through irony and satire. This Jonsonian trait is closely related to Brecht’s anti-Aristotelian concept of tragedy and his so-called verfremdungseffect. By adopting this Brechtian aesthetics of epic theatre as critical methodology, this essay aims to analyse how Sejanus distances the audience from its protagonists and how it invites us to reinterpret its surface meaning. As a consequence, it will be argued that we identify Tiberius’s Machiavellian masquerade as an essential political technique to maintain his corrupt power and that we recognize the demoralized civic virtue gives no other alternative to Roman politics but an apocalyptic doomsday.
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