When Legends Come Alive. A Reading of Lucan's Pharsalia. Seria: Bibliotheca Iagiellonica. Fontes et Studia. Tom 28

It is Lucaris own particular approach to intertextuality that makes any analysis and interpretation of the Pharsalia such a challenge. Hę may repeatedly allude to the same hypotext or simultaneously allude to several, paying no regard to the formal division of the epic into books. Indeed, hę may also mąkę allusions to passages previously written by himself. At first sight, therefore, the compo-sition of the poem appears to be somewhat chaotic. Paradoxically, however, the key to understanding the Pharsalia lies precisely in its highly intertextual character and its seeming-ly fragmentary structure, as it contains informal compositional units that arę independent of the poems formal division into books. At one and the same time, therefore, the epic is both chaotic and very neatly ordered. The goal of the present study is to discover j ust how this informal division operates by analysing its basie elements, the way in which they arę connected and - of course - their meaning.