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Nicholas Wilshere
Research Student, Faculty of Arts
Contact
- workArchaeology and Classics Building
University Park
Nottingham
NG7 2RD
UK - work0115 951 4800
- fax0115 951 4811
- abxnw1@nottingham.ac.uk
Research Summary
In common with many other ancient authors the second-century AD satirist Lucian quotes Homer as an authority, but he often does so with some irony. By undertaking an analysis of his very frequent… read more
Current Research
In common with many other ancient authors the second-century AD satirist Lucian quotes Homer as an authority, but he often does so with some irony. By undertaking an analysis of his very frequent quotation from, and allusion to, Homeric epic I am examining both what Lucian quotes and how he reworks Homer's text through cento, parody and deliberate misquotation. I hope to develop a more sophisticated analysis of the subversive humour and politics inherent in such allusion during the period of the Second Sophistic.
I am also examining Lucian's presentation of Homer the man (principally in the True Story and Charon), demonstrating points of contact with texts such as the pseudo-Plutarchan and pseudo-Herodotean Lives of Homer. The broader intellectual ramifications of this project include an analysis of the presentation of Greek cultural identity in contemporary literature, the reception and appropriation of the Greek literary past and the politics of ethnicity - Lucian himself was Syrian but writing in Greek - among the highly-educated elite of the Roman Empire.