Lucan: Spectacle and Engagement

Matthew Leigh takes as his guiding theme the unusual prominence of spectacle and of spectators in the Pharsalia. Why does Lucan so often indict the complicity or apathy of characters who would sooner watch the action than engage? What is behind the determination of Caesar's men to turn the civil war into a theatrical display for the benefit of their general? In answering these questions, Dr Leigh reveals the richness and breadth of imagination of a poet who does not just compose a coruscating anti-Aeneid, but is also profoundly aware of his relationship with the historical, rhetorical, and philosophical traditions of Rome. By Studying the tension between the narrator's impassioned interventions against history and his characters' often manic zeal to transform civil war into performance, this work discovers a Lucan who is as funny as he is serious, as reflective as he is committed.