VOMITING UP VERGIL: SENECA’S EMETIC THEORY OF RECEPTION

Seneca’s creative reworkings of earlier Latin and Greek literature are by now an essential part of his scholarly treatment. This article identifies a heretofore unrecognized component of his method of conceiving literary reception: vomit. Given the negative moralistic associations of vomit in Latin literature – including in Seneca’s own corpus – the repurposing of vomit as part of a normative theory of reception may come as a surprise, but close attention to the Apocolocyntosis , Ep . 108, and Ep. 84 reveals a serious Senecan engagement with the image of vomit as reception, helps shed light on some absent presences within Seneca’s texts, and adds complexity to our understanding of the trope of ‘textual digestion’.