The Elements of Senecan Tragedy in Chortatsis’ Erophile

Abstract

Over the decades precedng the Turkish conquest (1669) the Venetian Candia experiences the abrupt cultural boom due to its economic prosperity and immediate connexions with the Renaissance culture of the West. One of the most prominent creative personalities of the day is Georgios Chortatsis, a playwright whose works are written under the influence of Italian Renaissance drama. The tragedies of this theatre are composed in the tradition of Seneca the dramatist, whose indirect influence the author of this paper traces in Chortatsis' Erophile too. At the same time it is via Italy that some elements of Stoic teaching reach Chortatsis - primarily the doctrine of "conflagration" of all things by means of cosmic fire and the successive reconstitution of the new universe, starting with the Golden Age. The contemporary historical monument, filled with the premonition of catastrophe, might have given rise to restoration of such a melancholy philosophy of history.