The Poet Lucan
Subtitle: Studies in Rhetorical Epic (Bristol Classical Paperbacks.) (Bristol Classical Paperbacks.)
Edition: New Ed edition
Publisher: Duckworth Publishing
Published: August 1, 1996
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 104
ISBN-13: 9781853994883
Subjects: Novels, other prose & writers; Poetry & poets: classical, early & medieval; Ancient - General; Ancient and Classical; Ancient, Classical & Medieval; Reference / Foreign Languages; Literary Criticism & Collections / Ancient & Classical; History - General History; Latin
Description: "Lucan's epic on the Civil War has dodged in and out of fashion. Widely admired in the 17th and 18th centuries, it came in the 19th and 20th to be criticised by comparison with Virgil's Aeneid. The latter was established as the standard by which all other epic poets fail. Lucan's besetting 'fault' was seen as his reliance on rhetoric. This work sets out to consider the rules of ancient rhetoric as learned by Lucan and applied in his epic. Four themes commmon to poetry and to the declamatory schools (tyranny, storms, the occult and dreams) are closely analyzed in relation to the poem, and the poem is itself set in the context of the Neronian age."--Bloomsbury Publishing

Lucan's epic on the Civil War has dodged in and out of fashion. Widely admired in the 17th and 18th centuries, it came in the 19th and 20th to be criticised by comparison with Virgil's Aeneid. The latter was established as the standard by which all other epic poets fail. Lucan's besetting "fault" was seen as his reliance on rhetoric. This work sets out to consider the rules of ancient rhetoric as learned by Lucan and applied in his epic. Four themes commmon to poetry and to the declamatory schools (tyranny, storms, the occult and dreams) are closely analyzed in relation to the poem, and the poem is itself set in the context of the Neronian age