Borrowed Flames: Intertextuality in Lucan's Bellum Civile

Intertextuality is far from a linear or one-directional relationship. Rather, it is a radiating and multi-faceted conversation between authors. This thesis explores Lucan’s intertextual allusions by tracing how Lucan treats and mutates the works of his literary predecessors. Lucan’s readers familiar with Virgil, Ovid, and elegy will see the foundation on which he builds his epic and the background by which his story is informed. However, his readers will also find his adaptation of these sources redirecting their reading of those same sources. More often than not the contexts in which Lucan puts his allusions problematize the sources themselves. The genius of his intertextual allusions lies in his rearrangement of echoed material, repurposing and recombining motifs, images, even verbatim echoes from Virgil, elegiac poets, and Ovid, to not only ironize his own passages and multiply layers of meaning but also to question, rebut, and problematize his sources.