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10 - Lucian the Doorkeeper: Inside and Outside in Lucianic Poetics

from Part II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2024

Simon Goldhill
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Summary

As every reader of Lucian knows, he always belongs to something without belonging to it wholly. His relationship to his own Greek identity is undoubtedly the most symbolic instance: although wholly mastering the Greek language, he emphasises his being a barbarian. Lucian’s foreignness is a typical mark of his protean authorial persona throughout his œuvre, producing a constant tension between an inside and an outside as Lucian emphasises his own paradoxical liminality. This chapter discusses six of his texts (True Histories, Scythian, The Hall, On Salaried Posts, Symposium, and Lexiphanes), suggesting that a movement towards the inside and then the outside marks Lucian’s textuality in disparate ways. Depending on the specific narrative context, this movement assumes different meanings (autobiographical, metaphorical, metapoetical, rhetorical) that are often combined with each other, but most importantly produces a fundamental tension between meaning itself and the absence of significance.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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