L'étude de la création lexicale en latin détermine la fréquence de certaines formations, leur productivité et leur emploi, selon des périodes, des genres ou des auteurs donnés. L’analyse morphologique des néologismes poétiques rend compte des capacités du latin à innover lexicalement en puisant dans ses fonds propres. Notre présente étude s’intéresse au phénomène de la composition nominale, dont la variété des combinaisons possibles, les commodités lexicales et métriques demeurent un élément déterminant dans le renouvellement du vocabulaire poétique latin, répondant aux soucis de varietas et d’originalité des poetae fabricatores. Afin de comprendre les influences lexicales des veteres poetae sur les poètes postérieurs, cette étude part de la poésie cicéronienne (Catulle, Lucrèce et Cicéron) pour s’étendre à la période augustéenne (Virgile, Horace, Properce, Tibulle et Ovide), la plus fertile en composés nouveaux, puis à la julio-claudienne (Sénèque, Perse et Lucain) et enfin à la flavienne (Silius Italicus, Valérius Flaccus, Stace, Martial et Juvénal) en s’autorisant une comparaison avec le latin tardif. La très faible fréquence d’attestation des lexèmes poétiques, dont une grande partie constitue des hapax legomena, permet de considérer ces termes comme des créations poétiques. Ces composés nouveaux contribuent à une poïetique du sens en intensifiant le discours et en créant une enargeia propre à mettre en évidence une pensée unique. Il convient dès lors de souligner l’intérêt stylistique et sémantique que ces néologismes revêtent par la simplicité de leur formation, de leur statut de mots « possibles » et enfin de leur adaptation aux différents mètres latins, et en particulier l’hexamètre dactylique. / The study of lexical creation in Latin determines the frequency of certain formations, their productivity and their use according to given periods, types or authors. The morphological analysis of poetic neologisms shows the lexical innovative quality of Latin and its ability to feed on itself. Our study focuses on the phenomenon of compounding whose variety of possible combinations and adaptability to lexis and metrics remain crucial factors in the renewal of the Latin poetic vocabulary, thus answering the poetae fabricatores’s concerns about varietas and originality. In order to understand the lexical influences of the veteres poetae on the following poets, this study on lexical creation by nominal compounding starts from the Ciceronian period (Catullus, Lucretius and Cicero) to the Augustan Age (Virgil, Horace, Propertius, Tibullus and Ovid) – when the widest range of new compounds was created – to the Julio-Claudian period (Seneca, Persius and Lucan) to the Flavian Age (Silius Italicus, Valerius Flaccus, Statius, Martial and Juvenal), with a comparison with Late Latin. The very low frequency of the occurrences of poetic words, many of which are hapax legomena, makes it possible to regard these terms as poetic creations. These new compounds contribute to a poietic of the meaning by intensifying the speech and by creating an enargeia that reveals a single thought. We can therefore stress the stylistic and semantic interests of these neologisms due to the simplicity of their formation, their status of “possible” words and eventually their adaptation to the various Latin meters, especially the dactylic hexameter.

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.