Lucan
Journal Data
| Type | SOURCE_BOOK |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Oxford University Press, USA |
| ISBN-13 | 9780198150671 |
| Open Library | OL3278040W |
| Total publications | 12 |
| Coverage period | 1997 - 1997 |
| Language | EN |
| Cited by | 68 |
| h-index | 1 |
| i10-index | 1 |
The Pharsalia, Lucan's epic on the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, is a document of fundamental importance for students of the history and literature of Rome in the early imperial period. Whether one is a historian of the Republican opposition to Nero, or a literary critic teasing out the ideological implications of intertextuality, it is impossible to ignore this poem. Taking as his guiding theme the unusual prominence of spectacle and spectators in the Pharsalia - the tendency of either the narrator to represent complicity with or apathy towards the action of various charactyers as that of one who watches and does not engage, or of individual characters to celebrate the actions which they undertake by turning them into theatrical displays for others to watch - Dr Leigh demonstrates the importance of this phenomenon for narrative, and intertextual concerns as well as for history and socio-political matters. He shows how Lucan can take devices characteristic of Virgilian narrative and transform them to launch an attack on the Augustan ideology of the Aeneid and produce a savagely Republican anti-Aeneid which represents the civil wars as the death of Rome. By studying the tension between the narrator's impassioned interventions and his characters' often manic zeal to transform civil war into performance, this work discovers a Lucan who is as funny as he is serious, as reflective as he is committed
Apostrophe
Subject Textual Criticism Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online
Scaeva-Lucan’s Exemplary Hero
At the height of his aristeia, when apparently overcome at last by his wounds, Caesar’s centurion Scaeva pulls one final trick.
The Crazy Gang-Watching Caesar’s Centurions
This chapter extends the investigation of Lucan’s distanced and perhaps comic or burlesque modes of narration centred on the concepts of spectacle and spectatorship. In particular, it examines Lucan’s reflection of the theme in Caesar’s Commentaries of the deep loyalty of the centurions to their general and of their desire to fight in his sight. In Lucan, it is argued, this ambition is indicative not just of loyalty but of a closed and insane com…
Theories of Tensing in Narrative, the Latin Present Historic, and Lucan’s Vivid Present
Subject Textual Criticism Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online
Pompey-The View from the Hill
The dissenting voice with which Lucan narrates the Phrasalia emphasizes the degree of its engagement by contrasting itself with others and deploring their inaction. Frequently the contrasting figure of disengagement is represented as simply watching the action, as a spectator. When that spectator is clearly the Jupiter of the Augustan poets, the refusal to intervene is testimony not just to a generalized apathy but actually to a culpable complici…
The Future Tense in Latin Epic Narrative
Epilogue-Ecstatic Vision and the Tyrant’s Spectacle
The last chapter closed with the kingly visions of Sulla and Caesar, two murderers feasting their eyes on the spectacle of Rome’s transformation. It is pertinent to pause longer on these scenes, to examine farther the mentality they depict.
Passionate Viewing in the Spanish Campaign
At 4. 382-401, Lucan’s ecstatic exclamation evokes the relief of the surrendering Pompeian soldiers now released by Caesar from any further participation in the civil war.
A View To a Kill-Lucan’s Amphitheatrical Audience
In the previous two chapters, different modes of spectacle have been investigated—modes which traditionally serve to communicate a shared and stable ideology but which civil war leaves fractured and dysfunctional. Whether the issue is the collection of scars, battle under the eyes of the general, or the exemplary display of virtus. Lucan’s Scaeva scene has a central position.
Gaius Cornelius and the Caesarian Vates
How does the Pharsalia activate the opposition between spectacle and engagement? The following movement, which closes Lucan’s catalogue of omens before the battle of Pharsalus, offers an excellent starting-point for investigation. The account begins with the vague fears felt by Romans as far away even as Cadiz in the West and Armenia in the East.
Pharsalus-Wishing and Watching
If the narrator of the Pharsalia is repeatedly subject to intense emotional involvement in the various crises of the Spanish campaign. there is nevertheless a discernible heightening of engagement as the ep1c reaches its decisive conflict, Pharsalus. One passage from the Pharsalus narrative, 7, 185-213, has already been discussed as a programme for Lucan’s anguished and involved narrative voice; two others, 7. 1-44 and 7. 647-711. provide the foc…
Lucan
The Pharsalia, Lucan's epic on the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, is a document of fundamental importance for students of the history and literature of Rome in the early imperial period. Whether one is a historian of the Republican opposition to Nero, or a literary critic teasing out the ideological implications of intertextuality, it is impossible to ignore this poem. Taking as his guiding theme the unusual prominence of spectacle and spec…
Lucan
The Pharsalia, Lucan's epic on the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, is a document of fundamental importance for students of the history and literature of Rome in the early imperial period. Whether one is a historian of the Republican opposition to Nero, or a literary critic teasing out the ideological implications of intertextuality, it is impossible to ignore this poem. Taking as his guiding theme the unusual prominence of spectacle and spec…
Apostrophe
Subject Textual Criticism Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online
Scaeva-Lucan’s Exemplary Hero
At the height of his aristeia, when apparently overcome at last by his wounds, Caesar’s centurion Scaeva pulls one final trick.
The Crazy Gang-Watching Caesar’s Centurions
This chapter extends the investigation of Lucan’s distanced and perhaps comic or burlesque modes of narration centred on the concepts of spectacle and spectatorship. In particular, it examines Lucan’s reflection of the theme in Caesar’s Commentaries of the deep loyalty of the centurions to their general and of their desire to fight in his sight. In Lucan, it is argued, this ambition is indicative not just of loyalty but of a closed and insane com…
Theories of Tensing in Narrative, the Latin Present Historic, and Lucan’s Vivid Present
Subject Textual Criticism Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online
Pompey-The View from the Hill
The dissenting voice with which Lucan narrates the Phrasalia emphasizes the degree of its engagement by contrasting itself with others and deploring their inaction. Frequently the contrasting figure of disengagement is represented as simply watching the action, as a spectator. When that spectator is clearly the Jupiter of the Augustan poets, the refusal to intervene is testimony not just to a generalized apathy but actually to a culpable complici…
The Future Tense in Latin Epic Narrative
Epilogue-Ecstatic Vision and the Tyrant’s Spectacle
The last chapter closed with the kingly visions of Sulla and Caesar, two murderers feasting their eyes on the spectacle of Rome’s transformation. It is pertinent to pause longer on these scenes, to examine farther the mentality they depict.
Passionate Viewing in the Spanish Campaign
At 4. 382-401, Lucan’s ecstatic exclamation evokes the relief of the surrendering Pompeian soldiers now released by Caesar from any further participation in the civil war.
A View To a Kill-Lucan’s Amphitheatrical Audience
In the previous two chapters, different modes of spectacle have been investigated—modes which traditionally serve to communicate a shared and stable ideology but which civil war leaves fractured and dysfunctional. Whether the issue is the collection of scars, battle under the eyes of the general, or the exemplary display of virtus. Lucan’s Scaeva scene has a central position.
Gaius Cornelius and the Caesarian Vates
How does the Pharsalia activate the opposition between spectacle and engagement? The following movement, which closes Lucan’s catalogue of omens before the battle of Pharsalus, offers an excellent starting-point for investigation. The account begins with the vague fears felt by Romans as far away even as Cadiz in the West and Armenia in the East.
Pharsalus-Wishing and Watching
If the narrator of the Pharsalia is repeatedly subject to intense emotional involvement in the various crises of the Spanish campaign. there is nevertheless a discernible heightening of engagement as the ep1c reaches its decisive conflict, Pharsalus. One passage from the Pharsalus narrative, 7, 185-213, has already been discussed as a programme for Lucan’s anguished and involved narrative voice; two others, 7. 1-44 and 7. 647-711. provide the foc…
Lucan
The Pharsalia, Lucan's epic on the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, is a document of fundamental importance for students of the history and literature of Rome in the early imperial period. Whether one is a historian of the Republican opposition to Nero, or a literary critic teasing out the ideological implications of intertextuality, it is impossible to ignore this poem. Taking as his guiding theme the unusual prominence of spectacle and spec…