283Lucian’s Literary Cuisine: The Comic Dialogue and its Ambiguities

This chapter is devoted to Lucian’s poetics. It focuses on the nature of the comic dialogue, which Lucian proudly claims to have invented, and in particular on the ambiguities of this new literary form, examining in detail the two prolaliae in which he addresses this innovation, Zeuxis and Prometheus es in verbis , as well as the two metapoetic dialogues in which he discusses and illustrates his practice of mixing genres: Piscator and Bis accusatus . The comic dialogue is more than a blend of ancient comedy and Platonic dialogue. It is an open form, with a wide variety of expressions. To use a culinary metaphor, there is no fixed recipe for this new generic hybrid: the ingredients vary, as do the proportions of the mixture and its seasoning. It is tempting to think that Lucian conceptualised the comic dialogue retrospectively, creating a label easily affixable to promote a large part of his literary production.