Output details
29 - English Language and Literature
University of Exeter
War, Liberty and Caesar: English Responses to Lucan's 'Bellum Ciuile', c. 1580-1650
War, Liberty and Caesar, a 120,000-word monograph, deserves double weighting because it:
- addresses a vast range of materials, from neo-Latin commentaries on Aristotle’s Poetics to early modern English drama.
- employs a synthesis of different methodologies: the history of political thought, reader-response theory, the history of reading practices
- advances a complex thesis about Lucan (and other classical poetry’s) place in early modern culture, emphasising structures of feeling and political experience alongside a repertoire of humanist inspired reading practices
- challenges the thesis of David Norbrook, Andrew Hadfield et al. that Lucan was primarily the touchstone for ‘republican’ readers
