Lucan's Bellum Civile: The Struggle of Poetic Writing under the Imperial Autocracy

In this thesis I propose a reading of how Lucan's Bellum Civile responds to its contemporary historical and political environment, the reality of the Roman imperial regime, and offers a reflection on the meaning of writing literature under imperial rule.

To explore what the interaction between the poet and his text comes to be and, relatedly, how Lucan innovates epic poetry in comparison to its tradition, I analyze especially the 'authorial interventions', passages in which the voice of the narrator interrupts the flow of the narrative and engages intimately with it.

Their noticeable number and expressive content are marks of Lucan's rhetorical and poetical novelty, and therefore represent compelling keys to understanding the poet's conception of imperial autocracy, and his ability to engrain it in a literary discourse.