Ideology in Cold Blood : A Reading of Lucan's Civil War
Ideology in Cold Blood : A Reading of Lucan's Civil War offers new interpretations of the epic poem by Lucan about the civil wars which brought about an end of the Roman republic. Writing during the tyrannical rule of Emperor Nero, Lucan's account of the downfall of the republic portrays his hero Pompey in an ambiguous light, amidst the carnage and destruction that reigned throughout the entire Roman world. Fascinated by the grotesque destruction of human lives, Lucan's poem draws heavily on the violence and nihilism of the conflict, often overshadowing the tragedy and heroism of its characters.
Written with a style that is both shrewd and lively, Ideology in Cold Blood answers the question whether Lucan reflects ideological poetry at its most flagrant or a despairing proclamation of the meaninglessness of ideology. Shadi Bartsch places the paradoxes of Lucan in the context of recent political thought, literary theory, and ancient sources. She contributes to our understanding of poetry as a means of political expression by finding in Lucan's epic the redemptive power of storytelling set against the irony of a universally perceived need for political ideology vying paradoxically with universal suspicions of those same ideologies.
