Il gaudium e i suoi paradossi: aspetti di una dimensione emotiva in Seneca filosofo e tragico

The paper traces within Seneca’s philosophical and tragic work a specific emotional dimension, represented by terms such as gaudium, voluptas, laetitia and hilaritas, and aims to show the specific aspects that this dimension takes on in the De ira and the Thyestes. A brief introductory survey of the emotional ideal of the sapiens that emerges from the Epistulae morales provides a term of comparison, against which the emotional dimensions present in the De ira appear distinctly paradoxical; the treatise, in turn, turns out to be a sort of laboratory of emotions, which produces the most visible consequences in the Thyestes.