Madness triumphant : a reading of Lucan's Pharsalia / Lee Fratantuono.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Fratantuono, Lee, 1973-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Lucan, 39-65. Pharsalia.

Lucan.

Physical Description:

xxvii, 465 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Lanham : Lexington Books, 2012.

Summary:

Madness Triumphant: A Reading of Lucan's Pharsalia offers the most detailed analysis of Lucan's epic poem of the civil war between Caesar and Pompey to appear in English. In the manner of his books on Virgil and Ovid, Lee Fratantuono develops the thesis that the poet Lucan crafted an epic response to both Virgil and Ovid, the closing movement in a three act tragedy of madness. In response to the Aeneid, Lucan raises the idea that the final ethnographic settlement of Trojans and Italians may not have been for the best, while in response to the Metamorphoses, he explores the idea that the immortality achieved by the poet may not, after all, prove to be a blessing.

Any reader of classical literature and Roman history will find this to be an invaluable resource as well as a dramatic read. Lucan's poem is revealed to be the consummate hymn to fury, as the poet offers a return to the opening of Homer's Iliad and the wrath of Achilles, which is now viewed as part of an unending cycle of madness that will end only in the flames of a global conflagration that will consume all things. Fratantuono also investigates the pervasive intertext of Lucan's epic poem with his predecessor Manilius's Astronomica, as he explores the nature of Lucan's response to both Stoic and Epicurean antecedents. Manilius's stars are virtually sprinkled through the Pharsalia, as the heavens offer a celestial canvas for the poet of fury to illustrate the beautiful lies that may ultimately be shown to conceal even more seductive truths. Book jacket.

Contents:

Wars worse than civil

And now the wraths of the gods

As the south wind drove the fleet

But at the very edge of the earth

Thus did fortune preserve

After the leaders pitched camps

Slower than the eternal law

And now, beyond the gorges of Hercules

But not in Pharian ash

As soon as Caesar trampled.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 443-456) and index.

ISBN:

9780739173145

0739173146

9780739173152

0739173154

OCLC:

783155055