Shadi Bartsch is Professor of Classical Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago.

The problem of Lucan’s stance is notorious, and it is the focus of Bartsch’s book… She makes her own gripping contribution to the dossier of Lucanian despair in her first two chapters; but she believes that ultimately such interpretations sell the poet short, as an artist and a person. Her Lucan, both inside and outside his poem, is a Sartrean existentialist or a Rortyan moral ironist, who accepts the evanescence of traditional moral and political verities but who behaves as if his ideology matters anyhow and makes his choice regardless. Hence the ‘ideology in cold blood’ of her title: Lucan knows, and spellbindingly demonstrates, that Liberty is a cipher, but he commits himself to it none the less. Bartsch has put her finger on a key issue, and her passionate book is a useful check to the establishment of a new orthodoxy on Lucan.

• * Preface * Introduction * The Subject under Siege * Paradox, Doubling, and Despair * Pompey as Pivot * The Will to Believe * History without Banisters * Notes * Bibliography * Index

Shadi Bartsch is Professor of Classical Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago.

The problem of Lucan’s stance is notorious, and it is the focus of Bartsch’s book… She makes her own gripping contribution to the dossier of Lucanian despair in her first two chapters; but she believes that ultimately such interpretations sell the poet short, as an artist and a person. Her Lucan, both inside and outside his poem, is a Sartrean existentialist or a Rortyan moral ironist, who accepts the evanescence of traditional moral and political verities but who behaves as if his ideology matters anyhow and makes his choice regardless. Hence the ‘ideology in cold blood’ of her title: Lucan knows, and spellbindingly demonstrates, that Liberty is a cipher, but he commits himself to it none the less. Bartsch has put her finger on a key issue, and her passionate book is a useful check to the establishment of a new orthodoxy on Lucan.

• * Preface * Introduction * The Subject under Siege * Paradox, Doubling, and Despair * Pompey as Pivot * The Will to Believe * History without Banisters * Notes * Bibliography * Index

Shadi Bartsch is Professor of Classical Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago.

The problem of Lucan’s stance is notorious, and it is the focus of Bartsch’s book… She makes her own gripping contribution to the dossier of Lucanian despair in her first two chapters; but she believes that ultimately such interpretations sell the poet short, as an artist and a person. Her Lucan, both inside and outside his poem, is a Sartrean existentialist or a Rortyan moral ironist, who accepts the evanescence of traditional moral and political verities but who behaves as if his ideology matters anyhow and makes his choice regardless. Hence the ‘ideology in cold blood’ of her title: Lucan knows, and spellbindingly demonstrates, that Liberty is a cipher, but he commits himself to it none the less. Bartsch has put her finger on a key issue, and her passionate book is a useful check to the establishment of a new orthodoxy on Lucan.

• * Preface * Introduction * The Subject under Siege * Paradox, Doubling, and Despair * Pompey as Pivot * The Will to Believe * History without Banisters * Notes * Bibliography * Index