Document Type
Panel Presentation
Start Date
20-4-2018 10:45 AM
End Date
20-4-2018 12:00 PM
Keywords
Seneca, passions, personification
Biography
Hannah Smith is from Kenova, West Virginia and is working towards her B.S. in Biochemistry as well as her B.A. in Anthropology with a minor in Classical Latin from Marshall. Hannah presented a paper about growing up in West Virginia at the West Virginia Young Writer’s Convention and also a paper on the local history and culture of Huntington, WV at the Southern Anthropological Society’s 51st Annual Conference. Her love for the Lord and the mountain state continually influences her research and her adventures.
Major
Biochemistry and Anthropology
Advisor for this project
Christina Franzen, Ph.D.
Abstract
By personifying anger, life, and time in De Brevitate Vitae through the use of the active verb forms and possessive genitives, Seneca emphasizes the deleterious effect passions have on humans. This personification contributes to the loss of human agency passions produce. Therefore, not only Seneca’s words, but his grammar, support the idea that passions should be completely extirpated in order for humans to have a more controlled life. In making anger a person, Seneca gives it an agency he often doesn’t give humans, and in so doing he elevates this emotion to a level humans cannot control. In this way, passions steal human agency. Thus Seneca urges us to discipline ourselves by removing this darkness from our minds so that we may be in total control of our lives.
Seneca's Personification of the Passions
By personifying anger, life, and time in De Brevitate Vitae through the use of the active verb forms and possessive genitives, Seneca emphasizes the deleterious effect passions have on humans. This personification contributes to the loss of human agency passions produce. Therefore, not only Seneca’s words, but his grammar, support the idea that passions should be completely extirpated in order for humans to have a more controlled life. In making anger a person, Seneca gives it an agency he often doesn’t give humans, and in so doing he elevates this emotion to a level humans cannot control. In this way, passions steal human agency. Thus Seneca urges us to discipline ourselves by removing this darkness from our minds so that we may be in total control of our lives.
