Lucans Imperial World The Bellum Civile In Its Contemporary Contexts Laura Zientek Mark Thorne Editors by Laura Zientek; Mark Thorne (editors) 9781350097414, 9781350097445, 1350097411, 1350097446 instant download after payment.

These new essays comprise the first collective study of Lucan and his epic poem that focuses specifically on points of contact between his text and the cultural, literary, and historical environments in which he lived and wrote. The Bellum Civile, Lucan’s poetic narrative of the monumental civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompey Magnus, explores the violent foundations of the Roman principate and the Julio-Claudian dynasty. The poem, composed more than a century later during the reign of Nero, thus recalls the past while being very much a product of its time.
This volume offers innovative readings that seek to interpret Lucan’s epic in terms of the contemporary politics, philosophy, literature, rhetoric, geography, and cultural memory of the author’s lifetime. In doing so, these studies illuminate how approaching Lucan and his text in light of their contemporary environments enriches our understanding of author, text, and context individually and in conversation with each other.
In Lucan’s Imperial World: The Bellum Civile in Its Contemporary Contexts, Zientek and Thorne bring together a selection of new studies by an international team of scholars who examine Lucan’s epic poem in light of the author’s mid-first century CE environment. These papers explore how Lucan’s family, education, literary contemporaries, observations of imperial life and politics, and knowledge of philosophy and history inform his work. These varied contexts from Lucan’s lifetime shaped his understanding of the world and, thus, influenced how he composed his poem. Reading Lucan alongside these ideas and environments allows for a more nuanced understanding both of the text and of the world in which it was produced. Lucan’s Imperial World introduces new lines of inquiry and builds on previous studies in four key areas: the contemporary literary and rhetorical traditions of Lucan’s day; geography, natural philosophy, and natural resources; the exemplary and philosophical role of Cato the Younger; and the evolving cultural memory during the early principate about the late Republic and civil wars of the first century BCE.