Recent scholarship has tended to vacillate between two contradictory positions: first, that Lucan... more Recent scholarship has tended to vacillate between two contradictory positions: first, that Lucan mimetically illustrates his belief in an aleatory universe by smashing to bits the formal traditions of epic poetry; second, that he is a bitter caricaturist—by definition amanipulator, not a destroyer, of form–who parodies his epic predecessors, especially Vergil, in order to expose the bankruptcy of epic ideology.This paper argues that Lucan’s caricatures serve, in addition to the negative purpose of ridiculing the epic genre, a positive one as well: to privilege pure form above all other aesthetic considerations.
The Taste for Nothingness: A Study of Virtus and Related Themes in Lucan's Bellum Civile
This study grew out of my doctoral dissertation and remains much indebted to the insights and adv... more This study grew out of my doctoral dissertation and remains much indebted to the insights and advice so generously accorded by the members of my doctoral committee: Rev. Charles Witke, Elaine Fantham, K. Sara Myers, and Ralph Williams. My thanks also to Donka ...
This dissertation examines the thematics of virtus in Lucan's Bellum Civile. By showing how, ... more This dissertation examines the thematics of virtus in Lucan's Bellum Civile. By showing how, in the context of civil war, the positive significances of the term virtus are replaced by their traditional opposites, Lucan advances a strikingly modern theory of semantic indeterminacy. That theory is in turn linked to a larger, deeply nihilistic view of the universe. For Lucan, stability of meaning is only possible in a stable cosmos; in a universe governed, as his is, by blind chance, all definitions are random as well, and there is nothing to bind words to their meanings. Beginning with a discussion of the programmatic significance of the proem (Chapter One), the dissertation uses a traditional explicatory method in order to illustrate how the text of the Bellum Civile communicates Lucan's theory. Further chapters examine Lucan's treatment of the heroic virtus of the epic warrior (Chapter Two), the moral virtus of the traditional Stoic paragon, Cato the Younger (Chapter Three), and the part-Stoic virtus of Pompey together with the amoral virtus of Caesar (Chapter Four).Ph.D.Classical StudiesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/105025/1/9624730.pdfDescription of 9624730.pdf : Restricted to UM users only
... By deflecting responsibility for the disaster away from Oedipus and onto the gods, the chorus... more ... By deflecting responsibility for the disaster away from Oedipus and onto the gods, the chorus represents divinity as all-powerful and distinct from Fate; this anti-Stoic distinction between Fate and divinity persists into the fifth ode, but by then the polarities are reversed, with Fate in ...
A través de un análisis de pasajes de Edipo, Medea y Tiestes de Séneca, este artículo intenta dem... more A través de un análisis de pasajes de Edipo, Medea y Tiestes de Séneca, este artículo intenta demostrar que las tragedias de Séneca mantienen la ética estoica del naturam sequi a la vez que rechazan el cosmos estoico racional y, con él, la base racionalista de la ética estoica. Los personajes trágicos senequeanos quedan así atrapados entre dos imperativos éticos —seguir la naturaleza y comportarse racionalmente— que son contradictorios en el universo que se ven forzados a habitar.
This dissertation examines the thematics of virtus in Lucan's Bellum Civile. By showing how, ... more This dissertation examines the thematics of virtus in Lucan's Bellum Civile. By showing how, in the context of civil war, the positive significances of the term virtus are replaced by their traditional opposites, Lucan advances a strikingly modern theory of semantic indeterminacy. That theory is in turn linked to a larger, deeply nihilistic view of the universe. For Lucan, stability of meaning is only possible in a stable cosmos; in a universe governed, as his is, by blind chance, all definitions are random as well, and there is nothing to bind words to their meanings. Beginning with a discussion of the programmatic significance of the proem (Chapter One), the dissertation uses a traditional explicatory method in order to illustrate how the text of the Bellum Civile communicates Lucan's theory. Further chapters examine Lucan's treatment of the heroic virtus of the epic warrior (Chapter Two), the moral virtus of the traditional Stoic paragon, Cato the Younger (Chapter Three), and the part-Stoic virtus of Pompey together with the amoral virtus of Caesar (Chapter Four).Ph.D.Classical StudiesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/105025/1/9624730.pdfDescription of 9624730.pdf : Restricted to UM users only
This paper aims to analyse the connexion between Aeneas’ description of the sack of Troy (Aen., I... more This paper aims to analyse the connexion between Aeneas’ description of the sack of Troy (Aen., II) and Nisus’ and Euryalus’ episode in Book IX. The connexion between both epyllia comes through three echoes in Book IX of the line invadunt urbem somno vinoque sepulta (Aen., II, 265). The verbal relations that link the episodes together are vital to understand the complex net of allusions and internal relations inherent to Vergilian poetics.
Ausonius' Elegiac Wife: Epigram 20 and the Traditions of Latin Love Poetry
... 16 Gavisa est certe sublatam Cynthia legem, qua quondam edicta flemus uterque diu, ni nos div... more ... 16 Gavisa est certe sublatam Cynthia legem, qua quondam edicta flemus uterque diu, ni nos divideret: quamvis diducere amantes non queat invitos Iuppiter ipse duos. ... spreta latet silvis pudibundaque frondibus ora protegit et solis ex illo vivit in antris; Page 11. R. SKLENAR 61 ...
Recent scholarship has tended to vacillate between two contradictory positions: first, that Lucan... more Recent scholarship has tended to vacillate between two contradictory positions: first, that Lucan mimetically illustrates his belief in an aleatory universe by smashing to bits the formal traditions of epic poetry; second, that he is a bitter caricaturist—by definition amanipulator, not a destroyer, of form–who parodies his epic predecessors, especially Vergil, in order to expose the bankruptcy of epic ideology.This paper argues that Lucan’s caricatures serve, in addition to the negative purpose of ridiculing the epic genre, a positive one as well: to privilege pure form above all other aesthetic considerations.
The Taste for Nothingness: A Study of Virtus and Related Themes in Lucan's Bellum Civile
This study grew out of my doctoral dissertation and remains much indebted to the insights and adv... more This study grew out of my doctoral dissertation and remains much indebted to the insights and advice so generously accorded by the members of my doctoral committee: Rev. Charles Witke, Elaine Fantham, K. Sara Myers, and Ralph Williams. My thanks also to Donka ...
This dissertation examines the thematics of virtus in Lucan's Bellum Civile. By showing how, ... more This dissertation examines the thematics of virtus in Lucan's Bellum Civile. By showing how, in the context of civil war, the positive significances of the term virtus are replaced by their traditional opposites, Lucan advances a strikingly modern theory of semantic indeterminacy. That theory is in turn linked to a larger, deeply nihilistic view of the universe. For Lucan, stability of meaning is only possible in a stable cosmos; in a universe governed, as his is, by blind chance, all definitions are random as well, and there is nothing to bind words to their meanings. Beginning with a discussion of the programmatic significance of the proem (Chapter One), the dissertation uses a traditional explicatory method in order to illustrate how the text of the Bellum Civile communicates Lucan's theory. Further chapters examine Lucan's treatment of the heroic virtus of the epic warrior (Chapter Two), the moral virtus of the traditional Stoic paragon, Cato the Younger (Chapter Three), and the part-Stoic virtus of Pompey together with the amoral virtus of Caesar (Chapter Four).Ph.D.Classical StudiesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/105025/1/9624730.pdfDescription of 9624730.pdf : Restricted to UM users only
... By deflecting responsibility for the disaster away from Oedipus and onto the gods, the chorus... more ... By deflecting responsibility for the disaster away from Oedipus and onto the gods, the chorus represents divinity as all-powerful and distinct from Fate; this anti-Stoic distinction between Fate and divinity persists into the fifth ode, but by then the polarities are reversed, with Fate in ...
A través de un análisis de pasajes de Edipo, Medea y Tiestes de Séneca, este artículo intenta dem... more A través de un análisis de pasajes de Edipo, Medea y Tiestes de Séneca, este artículo intenta demostrar que las tragedias de Séneca mantienen la ética estoica del naturam sequi a la vez que rechazan el cosmos estoico racional y, con él, la base racionalista de la ética estoica. Los personajes trágicos senequeanos quedan así atrapados entre dos imperativos éticos —seguir la naturaleza y comportarse racionalmente— que son contradictorios en el universo que se ven forzados a habitar.
This dissertation examines the thematics of virtus in Lucan's Bellum Civile. By showing how, ... more This dissertation examines the thematics of virtus in Lucan's Bellum Civile. By showing how, in the context of civil war, the positive significances of the term virtus are replaced by their traditional opposites, Lucan advances a strikingly modern theory of semantic indeterminacy. That theory is in turn linked to a larger, deeply nihilistic view of the universe. For Lucan, stability of meaning is only possible in a stable cosmos; in a universe governed, as his is, by blind chance, all definitions are random as well, and there is nothing to bind words to their meanings. Beginning with a discussion of the programmatic significance of the proem (Chapter One), the dissertation uses a traditional explicatory method in order to illustrate how the text of the Bellum Civile communicates Lucan's theory. Further chapters examine Lucan's treatment of the heroic virtus of the epic warrior (Chapter Two), the moral virtus of the traditional Stoic paragon, Cato the Younger (Chapter Three), and the part-Stoic virtus of Pompey together with the amoral virtus of Caesar (Chapter Four).Ph.D.Classical StudiesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/105025/1/9624730.pdfDescription of 9624730.pdf : Restricted to UM users only
This paper aims to analyse the connexion between Aeneas’ description of the sack of Troy (Aen., I... more This paper aims to analyse the connexion between Aeneas’ description of the sack of Troy (Aen., II) and Nisus’ and Euryalus’ episode in Book IX. The connexion between both epyllia comes through three echoes in Book IX of the line invadunt urbem somno vinoque sepulta (Aen., II, 265). The verbal relations that link the episodes together are vital to understand the complex net of allusions and internal relations inherent to Vergilian poetics.
Ausonius' Elegiac Wife: Epigram 20 and the Traditions of Latin Love Poetry
... 16 Gavisa est certe sublatam Cynthia legem, qua quondam edicta flemus uterque diu, ni nos div... more ... 16 Gavisa est certe sublatam Cynthia legem, qua quondam edicta flemus uterque diu, ni nos divideret: quamvis diducere amantes non queat invitos Iuppiter ipse duos. ... spreta latet silvis pudibundaque frondibus ora protegit et solis ex illo vivit in antris; Page 11. R. SKLENAR 61 ...
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