The fiction of History
Recalling the past and imagining the future with Caesar at Troy
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11130331 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Richard Alston (0000-0003-0843-9555, Universidad de Londres, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2010 |
| Volume | 23 |
| Issue | 1/2 |
| Pages | 143-160 |
| Publication date | 2010-09-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Classica - Revista Brasileira de Estudos Clássicos (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0103-4316 • E-ISSN: 2176-6436 |
| Publisher | Classica - Revista Brasileira de Estudos Classicos (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.24277/classica.v23i1/2.164 |
| OpenAlex | W1835345504 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 2 |
This essay considers the nature of historical discourse through a consideration of the historical narrative of Lucan’s Pharsalia. The focus is on the manner in which Lucan depicts history as capable of being fictionalised, especially through the operation of political power. The discourses of history make a historical account, but those discourses are not, in Lucan's view, true, but are fictionalised. The key study comes from Caesar at Troy, when Lucan explores the idea of a site (and history) which cannot be understood, but which nevertheless can be employed in a representation of the past. yet, Lucan also alludes to a ‘true history’, which is unrepresentable in his account of Pharsalus, and beyond the scope of the human mind. Lucan’s true history can be read against Benjamin and Tacitus. Lucan offers a framework of history that has the potential to be post-Roman (in that it envisages a world in which there is no Rome), and one in which escapes the frames of cultural memory, both in its fictionalisation and in the dependence of Roman imperial memory on cultural trauma
Aesthetics · Art · Cultural history · Focus (optics) · Literature · Narrative · Political history · Politics · Power (physics) · Representation (politics) · Scope (computer science) · Byzantine Studies and History · Classical Antiquity Studies · Computer Science · History · Law · Medieval Literature and History
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |