‘So long as these unhappie times did last’ (I. 6): narration in Samuel Daniel’s <i>The Civil Wars</i> and Lucan’s <i>Pharsalia</i>

Abstract This essay reconsiders the relationship between Lucan’s Pharsalia and Samuel Daniel’s The Civil Wars. Unlike previous essays, which have largely focussed upon individual verbal echoes between the two poems, this essay argues that Daniel draws upon Lucan’s particular narrative strategies. Rather than offering a clear account of the Wars of the Roses, Daniel — like Lucan — repeatedly interrupts, questions, and even intervenes in his own narrative. Through this engagement with Lucan, Daniel thus calls attention to the problematics — and the power — of historical narrative. The Civil Wars becomes a poem which teaches its readers about the dangers of the historical poem itself, refusing to offer any neat reconstruction of past events.