Chapter 3 - Lucan and Revolution

Summary

The ability of ancient biofiction to become actively political comes to the surface in this chapter. It focuses on biofictional receptions of Lucan’s Bellum ciuile (sometimes called Pharsalia), an epic written under Nero about the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, in and around periods of revolutionary politics, and in particular in early modern England in the period leading up to and following the English revolution and in peri-revolutionary France. At the centre of the ancient and Renaissance biographical tradition about Lucan was the story of how the poet was forced to commit suicide by Nero crudelis (Martial 7.21.3) following his involvement in a plot to assassinate the emperor. For readers working through ideas of republicanism, reading Lucan’s text through the lens of the Life transformed the poet’s death into a function of his own epic, inscribed in the textual discourse of the Bellum ciuile itself.