Lucan : spectacle and engagement / Matthew Leigh.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Leigh, Matthew.

Series:

Oxford classical monographs

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Lucan, 39-65. Pharsalia.

Lucan.

Pharsalus, Battle of, Farsala, Greece, 48 B.C., in literature.

Epic poetry, Latin--History and criticism.

Epic poetry, Latin.

Rome--History--Civil War, 49-45 B.C--Literature and the war.

Rome.

Physical Description:

ix, 366 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Clarendon Press ; New York : Oxford University Press, 1997.

Summary:

The Pharsalia is Lucan's epic on the civil wars between Caesar and Pompey. It is a poem of immense energy and intelligence in which spectacle and spectatorship are prominent. Leigh shows that by transforming certain Virgilian narrative devices Lucan launches an attack on the Augustan ideology of the Aeneid: where Virgil writes the foundation myth for the new regime and celebrates the connections between Augustus and Aeneas, Lucan produces a savagely republican anti-Aeneid which represents the civil wars as the death of Rome.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [331]-345) and indexes.

ISBN:

0198150679

OCLC:

187469557