Lucan and the sublime
Subtitle: power, representation and aesthetic experience
By: Henry J. M. Day
Series: Cambridge classical studies
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Cambridge; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 262
ISBN-13: 9781107020603
Subjects: LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Ancient, Classical & Medieval; Sublime, The, in literature; Criticism and interpretation
Description: "This is the first systematic study of the sublime in Lucan. Drawing upon renewed critical interest in the tradition of philosophical aesthetics, Henry Day argues that the category of the sublime offers a means of moving beyond readings of Lucan's epic poem Bellum Civile in terms of political commitment or nihilism. Demonstrating in dialogue with theorists from Burke and Kant to Freud, Lyotard and Ankersmit the continuing vitality of Longinus' foundational treatise On the Sublime, Day charts Lucan's complex and instructive exploration of the relationship between sublimity and ethical discourses of freedom and oppression. Through its representation of the apocalypse of civil war and metapoetic accounts of its own genesis, through its heated linguistic texture and proclaimed effects upon future readers, and, most powerfully of all, through its representation of its twin protagonists Caesar and Pompey, the Bellum Civile emerges as a central text in the history of the sublime"--
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: Introduction; 1. The experience of the sublime; 2. Representation, the sublime and the Bellum Civile; 3. The Caesarian sublime; 4. The Pompeian sublime; Epilogue.