Le 'increspature metriche emotive' nella tragedia di Seneca: alcune ricognizioni iniziali sul testo della Medea

The aim of this paper is to try a first analysis experiment of Seneca’s tragedies iambic trimeter (starting from some verses taken from Medea) in order to explore the effects of furor not only on the actions of the heroine but also on her very way of speaking: each time the irrational forces, which gradually gain complete control on her feelings and emotions, reach a signifcant peak, we can notice that many of the trimeters recited by her show an interesting number of solutions (from iambus to tribrachus) or substitutions (from iambus to dactyl or anapaest) which accelerate the rythm of the verse and make even clearer the peculiar mental turmoil Medea undergoes during her furor. When this ‘emotional trimeters’ are put in sequence, a real storm in character’s elocutio takes place, so that we can easier figure her out as overwhelmed by passions, speaking furiously and moving without control on the stage.