Has the pendulum swung too far, dear reader? Have we all gone Derrida [on Lucan]? Celotto certainly thinks so, and in his Florida PhD thesis book poses a challenge to the prevalent (at least in my post-code area) deconstructionist interpretation of Lucan's civil war epic which reads the poem as characterised by confusion, fragmentation and irrationality, dissolving the epic genre and disregarding conventional norms. C. is aware that many are quite comfortable with this position and see no need for change. O'Hara nails it: ‘the case for Lucan being fractured is looking pretty good, and attempts to put him back together again have not worked’ (Inconsistency in Roman Epic (2007), 138, quoted by C. at 4). Nevertheless, C. argues ‘that Lucan composed a poem characterized by unity, coherence, and linearity, to convey a specific and unambiguous political message’ (4). Using structuralist methodology, in particular Saussure's notion of binary opposition and Lévi-Strauss's propositions on deep structures as sets of binary oppositions, C. sets off to explore how ‘Lucan uses the dialectic of the opposite forces of Love and Strife to create a coherent narrative structure that conveys a cohesive political vision’ (4). After surveying other epics for Aristotelian unity, however, C. reminds us that, according to Hainsworth, different rules apply in historical epic (The Idea of Epic (1991)): Lucan's lack of a central hero means that a sense of unity can be found only if one considers that the Bellum Civile is built not around such a hero or an event but instead showcases a theme: the demise of the Roman Republic (5). In addition, he surveys Quint's analytic tools of Iliadic and Odyssean plots (Epic and Empire (1993)), the former linear and continuous, the latter circular and repetitious; the former a model for the ‘epic of winners’ (and that then also applies to the Aeneid), the latter (and that then also applies to the Bellum Civile) a model for the ‘epic of losers’. C. questions this dichotomy and suggests seeing unity and linearity in not just the Aeneid but also Bellum Civile. The former is ascending toward a positive end, whereas the latter is descending, moving towards a negative end, thereby adapting the—in Aristotelian terms—ideal tragic plot to epic poetry. C. then suggests a reading of the Bellum Civile along the lines of Lucan's adaptation of the cosmological dialectic of Love and Strife. These Empedoclean terms (which are often perceived as polar opposites, one constructive, the other destructive) can be refined to include destructive epic romances counterbalanced by constructive conflicts. Accordingly, the Aeneid features destructive forces followed by constructive forces in a kind of ascending path, while Lucan offers his readers the opposite sequence and a descending path. After an introductory chapter tracing the notion of Love and Strife in Greek and Roman thought and the epic genre in particular, C. develops his argument in four chapters followed by a coda on the reception of the cosmological dialectic of Love and Strife in Flavian epic. Ch. 2 highlights the influence of Empedoclean philosophy on Latin epic and proposes that Lucan equates civil war itself with the second phase of the Empedocelan cosmic cycle in which Strife progressively overcomes Love, and the Principate to its third phase characterised by complete chaos, a systematisation which lends narrative structure to the epic. Ch. 3 traces Love in the form of interpersonal relations in Lucan's epic, which while frequently doomed (Julia), often remain infertile (Cato, Alexander the Great) or resemble Aeneas’ destructive affair with Dido (Caesar and Cleopatra). Love fades away and Strife takes over. Ch. 4 in turn emphasises the lack of constructive Strife in Lucan's epic using the Aeneid as foil, which in contrast to the Bellum Civile offers the victory of cosmos over chaos, aristeia displaying virtus and granting immortality through fame, athletic games and finally clementia as mitigation for destructive strife. Indeed, Love and Strife combine rather than contrast to facilitate the annihilation of Rome, a feature which C. interprets as an imitatio negativa of the militia amoris developed in Roman Love Elegy which Lucan turns into an amor militiae (ch. 5). C. thus establishes Love and Strife as useful and convincing tools for reading, analysing and (as far as possible) systematising Lucan's epic. While I—even after reading this book—shall continue to live on the wild side of Lucan studies, I found C.'s study particularly fruitful for illuminating Lucan's constant and surprisingly systematic dialogue with the Aeneid, a much observed and not sufficiently explored characteristic of our favourite maverick author. This feature will make this book useful set reading for any class on Latin epic—deconstructionist or not.
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