Texte remanié de : Thèse de doctorat : Lettres : Heidelberg : 1983. / Bibliogr. p. 243-252.

Texte remanié de : Ph. D. / Revision of author's thesis (Ph. D.).

Le texte du Bellum ciuile n'a pas fait l'objet, en France, d'une nouvelle édition ou d'une traduction complète depuis celle parue à la CUF entre 1927 et 1930. Ce phénomène est d'autant plus surprenant qu'à la fin du XXème siècle et au début du XXIème siècle ont été réalisées des éditions en langue anglaise, allemande et italienne. La présente thèse tente donc de pallier ce manque en proposant une édition, une traduction et un commentaire du livre II de la Pharsale. Après une brève présentation des éléments d'introduction au texte qui touchent à l'auteur, à son œuvre ainsi qu'à des spécificités du livre II de la Pharsale, le premier tome de ce travail est consacré à l'histoire du texte de Lucain. Il apparaît que la tradition manuscrite du Bellum ciuile est complexe et qu'il n'est pas possible d'établir de stemma classant les manuscrits. Bien plus, la contamination manifeste de la tradition manuscrite ne signifie pas que l'état général du texte tel qu'il a été conservé est bon : au contraire, il existe de très nombreux passages obscurs dans le texte de Lucain. Le texte établi dans le présent travail ne repose donc pas uniquement sur la tradition directe de la Pharsale : il s'appuie également sur une vaste étude de la tradition indirecte et surtout sur la consultation des nombreuses conjectures qui ont été formulées pour tenter de mieux comprendre le texte de Lucain. Le texte latin et sa traduction sont suivis, dans un second volume, d'un commentaire linéaire. Celui-ci regroupe des discussions philologiques sur l'établissement du texte, mais aussi des considérations littéraires et stylistiques ainsi que des explications visant à éclaircir les allusions savantes du poète. / Lucan's epic has not been edited nor translated in France since Bourgery's edition published between 1927 and 1930. This fact is surprising considering that English, German and Italian scholars did such a work at the end of the 20th century and at the beginning of the 21st century. These two present volumes try to compensate this lack in contemporary French scholarship by furnishing a new edition, translation and commentary of Bellum ciuile's book 2. The first volume begins with an introduction to Lucan, to his epic and to some of the distinctive features of book 2, followed by an history of Lucan's text transmission. Pharsalia's textual tradition is complex and it is not possible to make a stemmatic recension fo the manuscripts. Moreover, the obvious contamination of Lucan's tradition does not imply that we are facing a well transmitted text : quite the opposite, many lines of the Bellum ciuile are certainly corrupted. The text established in this work doesn't rely on nothing but manuscripts of Pharsalia : I used as well the indirect tradition and, most importantly, the numerous conjectures made since the 15th century to improve the understand of Lucan's text. In the second volume of this work, the Latin text and its translation are followed by a line by line commentary. It is composed by critical discussion about text establishment, comments about stylistics and explanations of all the allusions made by the poet.

By combining literary criticism, philology, and contemporary psychoanalysis, this dissertation offers an innovative interpretation of Neronian court literature (Seneca, Lucan, and Petronius). I argue that the works of these three authors thematize and embody a problematic relation between the human subject and language. Language is not conceived or represented as an inert tool that can be easily appropriated by the speaking subject, but rather as a powerful entity that may, and often does, take control of the human subject, directing it from without. Besides analyzing how Seneca, Lucan, and Petronius portray the relation between the human subject and language in the internal plots and characters of their works, I also explore the relation between these three authors themselves and language. My conclusion is that this relation is defined by unresolved ambiguities and neurotic tensions, and I suggest that this might be a consequence of the traumatizing circumstances that the three examined authors endured at Nero’s court.

<p>This paper is concerned with the use of mutiny narratives in historical texts as a microcosm of the historians’ goal of the work as a whole. This study is built upon the recent trend in scholarship, where a particular feature of a text has been studied to provide an analysis on the author or the underlying purpose of his work. Mutinies and, more specifically, mutiny narrative patterns have not been studied to a great extent for this type of analysis. However, based upon their tradition delineation and explanation of events and their ubiquitous speeches, mutiny narratives are capable of providing a new avenue for this type of analysis. The first chapter will look at the mutiny of Scipio Africanus’ troops at Sucro in 206 B.C.E. as presented by the historians Polybius and Livy. Both attempted to organize their works upon particular moral and didactic lines, the results of which are clearly expressed in their construct of the mutiny. This intentional framework is also present in the poet Lucan’s historical epic the <em>Bellum Civile</em>, who shaped the mutiny of Caesar’s troops in 47 B.C.E. in order to express his own belief in the inherent cataclysm and paradox of civil war. Finally these same themes of chaos and contradiction are also present in my third chapter and its analysis of five mutinies found in Tacitus, two in 14 C.E. and three in 69 C.E. under Galba, Otho and Vocula. Tacitus deliberately engineered the earlier mutinies in order to create both thematic and linguistic echoes to the later seditions in order to prove that the same problems that caused the later civil war were present under the earliest emperors.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

Landscape in Roman literature is manifest with symbolic potential: in particular, Vergil and Ovid respond to ideologically loaded representations of abundance in nature that signal the dawn of the Augustan golden age. Vergil's Eclogues foreground a locus amoenus landscape which articulates both the hopes of the new age as well as the political upheaval that accompanied the new political regime; Ovid uses the same topography in order to suggest the arbitrary and capricious use of power within a deceptively idyllic landscape. Moreover, for Latin poets, depictions of landscape are themselves sites for poetic reflection as evidenced by the discussion of landscape ecphrases in Horace's Ars Poetica. My thesis focuses upon the depiction and refiguration of the locus amoenus landscape in the post-Augustan epics of the first century AD: Lucan's Bellum Civile, Valerius Flaccus' Argonautica, Statius' Thebaid and Silius Italicus' Punica. Landscape in these poems retains the moral, political and metapoetic force evident in the Augustan archetypes. However, I suggest that Lucan's Neronian Bellum Civile fundamentally refigures the landscapes of Latin epic poetry, inscribing the locus amoenus with the nefas of civil war in such a manner that it redefines the perception of landscape in the succeeding Flavian poets. Lucan perverts the landscape, making the locus horridus, a landscape of horror, fear and disgust, the predominant landscape of Latin epic; consequently, the poems of Valerius, Statius and Silius engage with Lucan's refiguration of landscape as a means of expressing the horror of civil war. In the first part of my thesis I examine archetypal landscapes, including those of the Augustan poets and Lucan's Bellum Civile. Taking an approach which engages with literary reception theory and the concept of the â horizon of expectationâ as a framework within which literary topographies can be understood as articulating a response to the thematics of civil war, in the second part of my thesis I demonstrate the manner in which landscapes represent a coherent and paradigmatic response to Lucan's imposition of his civil war narrative within the literary landscape of Roman literature.

Les deux premiers chants de Lucain témoignent d’une utilisation novatrice des discours directs dans l’épopée. Présentés sous forme de triades de paroles juxtaposées –le dialogue n’est plus possible dans le monde du De bello ciuili- dont l’objectif et le genre sont similaires, ils incitent le lecteur-auditeur de l’Antiquité, rompu aux joutes oratoires des concours de déclamation, à les comparer. L’examen de deux de ces groupes de discours sert de préliminaire à une enquête plus large sur la parole rhétorique, puis sur la parole poétique.Dans la confrontation des discours de la première triade (Curion / César /Laelius, au chant I) se lit la condamnation de l’éloquence traditionnelle fondée sur des valeurs éthiques universellement partagées. Elle est supplantée par une rhétorique sophistique qui redéfinit, exclusivement en fonction des intérêts personnels de l’orateur, tout ce qui a trait au droit, au juste ou à la citoyenneté, notions problématiques dans le contexte de perversion morale du bellum ciuile. L’efficacité de cette nouvelle éloquence est signalée par le succès des trois suasoires qui sont à l’origine des grands tournants narratifs de l’œuvre : Curion décide César à entrer définitivement dans l’affrontement civil (Chant I), Cicéron pousse Pompée à donner le signal du début du combat à Pharsale (Chant VII) et Pothin persuade Ptolémée d’assassiner Magnus (Chant VIII).Dans la comparaison des trois paroles prophétiques de la fin du livre I auxquelles répondent les trois discours du début du chant suivant, effusions angoissées de Romains anonymes (les femmes, les hommes et le vieillard), se dessine un art poétique destiné à justifier les choix génériques du poète pour traiter son sujet. Conformant son œuvre à la médiocrité humaine des masses, il doit renoncer au genre tragique (discours des femmes) ainsi qu’à la célébration épique des héros (discours des hommes) et s’efforcer de proposer, à l’instar du vieillard qui se remémore le passé pour anticiper le futur (le plus long discours de l’épopée, rappelant, par sa place et son sujet, l’ilioupersis d’Enée), une épopée historique qui cherche à percer l’opacité du monde de la guerre civile, dans lequel les dieux ne sont plus anthropomorphes. Empruntant leur esthétique du déchiffrement du réel aux Piérides ovidiennes, ces poétesses humaines, rivales des divines Muses (Métamorphoses V), Lucain refonde alors la persona de son uates. Chantre d’un genre nouveau, pour une épopée renouvelée, le ‘piéridique’ uates du De bello ciuili qui ne peut plus être omniscient –puisque les pensées et les actions des superi lui sont inconnaissables- refuse le patronage des divinités traditionnelles de la poésie, promet à son ‘héros’ César, non la gloire mais l’exécration éternelle et proclame avec défi, qu’il ne devra lui-même l’éternité qu’à la seule puissance de son talent personnel, divines Muses et grands guerriers héroïques des œuvres du passé ayant été congédiés par la guerre civile. / The first two books of Lucan reveal an innovative use of direct speech in epic. Presented as contiguous speech triads – dialogs being impossible in the realm of De bello ciuili – whose purpose and genre are similar, they lead the ancient reader-listener, used to oral debates typical of declamation contests, to compare them. The investigation of two of these speech groups is our first step to a larger inquiry on rhetoric speech, then on poetic speech.Confronting the speech of the first triad (Curion/Caesar/Laelius in book I) reveals the end of traditional eloquence based on universal ethic values. It is superseded by a sophistic rhetoric that redefines (exclusively according to the speaker's private interests) whatever relates to law, justice or citizenship – problematic concepts in the perverse moral context of bellum ciuile. The efficiency of this new eloquence is highlighted by the success of the three suasory performances which cause the work's main narrative turns: Curion convinces Caesar to definitely take part to the civil war (book I), Cicero leads Pompeus to launch the battle at Pharsalia (book VII) and Pothinus persuades Ptolemy to murder Magnus (book VIII).Comparing the three prophetic speeches at the end of book I (which mirror the three speeches at the beginning of the following book), anxious complains of anonimous Romans (the women, the men and the elderly), we identify an ‘art of poetry’ aimed at motivating the generic choices made by the poet to handle his subject. Working along the lines of the human depravity of masses, he may not employ neither the tragic style (the speech of women) nor the epic celebration of heroes (the speech of men), but must suggest – as the old man remembers the past to anticipate the future (the longest speech of the epic reminds Eneas’ Ilioupersis by means of its place and subject) – an historical epic aiming at enlightening the opaque world of civil war, in which the gods are no longer anthropomorphic. Borrowing their deciphering aesthetic to Ovids’ Pierides, human female poets rivaling the godly Muses (Metamorphosis V), Lucan reinvents the persona of his uates. Promoting a new genre, for a renewed epic, the 'pieridic' uates of De Bello Ciuili, which can no longer be omniscient – since the superi's thoughts and deeds are out of his reach – refuses to worship the traditional poetry deities, swears to his 'hero' Caesar not the glory but the eternal hatred and defiantly proclaims that he himself will deserve eternity only through his own talent, the godly Muses and great heroic warriors of ancient works having been dismissed by civil war.

Édition de : Thèse 3e cycle : Etudes latines : Paris 4 : 1986. / Bibliogr. p. [225]-228 Notes bibliogr. Index.

The present thesis considers the allusive and narrative function of fate and its associated concepts of providence, free will, necessity, and natural law in Paradise Lost. It argues that the narrative function of these concepts is shaped by Milton's allusions to classical epic, and assesses their impact on the Christian theology of the poem. It identifies unnoted allusions to well-known epic models (Homer, Vergil, Lucan), and examines how Lucretius' account of natural laws and post-Vergilian representations of epic aftermath influence Milton's own depiction of transgression and its aftermath in Paradise Lost. Chapter 1 considers Satan and other fallen angels' definition of fate as a materialist alternative for the personal rule of the Father. It traces several allusions to fate in cosmological and ethical settings, in Lucretius, Vergil, Lucan, and Statius, and analyses how these allusions interact with the Hesiodic mythical material in the opening books of Milton's epic. Chapter 2 focuses on a pattern of previously unnoted allusions to Lucretius' De Rerum Natura in the narrative of the Fall, culminating in Book 9. It argues that in his temptation of Eve, Milton's Satan subverts Lucretian teachings about the boundaries governing the physical universe as he persuades Eve to transgress her natural state in Eden. Chapter 3 discusses the appearance of the Father in an allusive epic council scene in Book 3. In the dialogue between Father and Son, I suggest, Milton evokes negotiations between the Homeric and Vergilian deities, depicting his God as surpassing his pagan epic counterparts who can only delay the fate of mortals, but not change them. Chapter 4 suggests that Milton's depiction of the aftermath of the Fall is indebted to post-Vergilian epic narratives of 'aftermath'. The final Books of Paradise Lost and the portrayal of Adam and Eve's moral freedom as they leave paradise, with providence their guide, should be read, I posit, against the backdrop of scenes and imagery from Lucan's Bellum Civile and Statius' Thebaid.

This thesis examines the increasing sophistication of sixteenth-century French literary engagement with Virgil's Aeneid. It argues that successive forms of engagement with the Aeneid should be viewed as a single process that gradually adopts increasingly complex literary strategies. It does this through a series of four different forms of literary engagement with the Aeneid: translation, continuation, rejection and reconciliation. The increasing sophistication of these forms reflects the writers' desire to interact with the original Aeneid as political epic and Roman foundation narrative, and with the political, religious and literary contexts of early modern France. The first chapter compares the methods of and motivations behind all of the sixteenth-century translations of the Aeneid into French; it thus demonstrates shifts in successive translators' interpretations of Virgil's work, and of its application to sixteenth-century France. The next three chapters each analyse adaptation of Virgil's poem in a major French literary work. Firstly, Ronsard's Franciade is analysed as an example of French foundation epic that simultaneously draws upon and rejects Virgil's narrative. Ronsard's poem is read in the light of Mapheo Vegio's “Thirteenth Book” of the Aeneid, or Supplementum, which continues Virgil's narrative and carries it over into a Christian context. Next, Agrippa d'Aubigné's response to Virgilian epic in Les Tragiques is shown to have been mediated by Lucan's Pharsalia and its anti- epic and anti-imperialist interpretation of the Aeneid. D'Aubigné's inversion of Virgil is highlighted through comparison of attitudes to death and resurrection in Les Tragiques, the Aeneid and Vegio's Antoniad. Finally, Guillaume de Salluste du Bartas' combination, in La Sepmaine and La Seconde Sepmaine of the hexameral structure of Genesis with Virgil's narrative of reconciliation after civil war is shown to represent the most sophisticated understanding of and most complex interaction with the Aeneid in sixteenth-century France.