from Part II
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 November 2024
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.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.