Editing Lucian (section)

===Modern period===
[[Thomas Carlyle]]'s epithet "[[Phallus]]-Worship", which he used to describe the contemporary literature of French writers such as [[Honoré de Balzac]] and [[George Sand]], was inspired by his reading of Lucian.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Jordan |first=Alexander |date=2020 |title=Thomas Carlyle and Lucian of Samosata |url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=144382595&site=eds-live&scope=site |journal=Scottish Literary Review |volume=12 |issue=1 |pages=51–60}}</ref> ''Kataplous, or Downward Journey'' also served as the source for [[Friedrich Nietzsche]]'s concept of the ''[[Übermensch]]'' or ''Overman''.<ref name="Forfurther">{{cite journal|last= Babich|first= Babette|title = Nietzsche's Zarathustra and Parodic Style: On Lucian's ''Hyperanthropos'' and Nietzsche's ''Übermensch'' |journal= Diogenes|volume=58|number= 4 |date =November 2011 |pages= 58–74|doi = 10.1177/0392192112467410|s2cid= 5727350}}</ref> Nietzsche declaration of a "new and super-human way of laughing – at the expense of everything serious!" echoes the exact wording of [[Tiresias]]'s final advice to the eponymous hero of Lucian's dialogue ''Menippus'': "Laugh a great deal and take nothing seriously."{{sfn|Branham|2010|page=864}} Professional philosophical writers since then have generally ignored Lucian,{{sfn|Turner|1967|page=99}} but Turner comments that "perhaps his spirit is still alive in those who, like [[Bertrand Russell]], are prepared to flavor philosophy with wit."{{sfn|Turner|1967|page=99}}

Many 19th century and early 20th century classicists viewed Lucian's works negatively.{{sfn|Richter|2017|page=327}} The German classicist [[Eduard Norden]] admitted that he had, as a foolish youth, wasted time reading the works of Lucian,{{sfn|Richter|2017|page=327}} but, as an adult, had come to realize that Lucian was nothing more than an "Oriental without depth or character ... who has no soul and degrades the most soulful language".{{sfn|Richter|2017|page=327}} [[Rudolf Helm]], one of the leading scholars on Lucian in the early twentieth century, labelled Lucian as a "thoughtless Syrian" who "possesses none of the soul of a tragedian"{{sfn|Richter|2017|page=327}} and compared him to the poet [[Heinrich Heine]], who was known as the "mockingbird in the German poetry forest".{{sfn|Richter|2017|page=327}} In his 1906 publication ''Lukian und Menipp'' ("Lucian and Menippus"), Helm argued that Lucian's claims of generic originality, especially his claim of having invented the comic dialogue, were actually lies intended to cover up his almost complete dependence on [[Menippus]], whom he argued was the true inventor of the genre.{{sfn|Richter|2017|page=333}}

Lucian's Syrian identity received renewed attention in the early twenty-first century as Lucian became seen as what Richter calls "a sort of Second Sophistic answer to early twenty-first-century questions about cultural and ethnic hybridity".{{sfn|Richter|2017|page=327}} Richter states that [[Postcolonialism|Postcolonial critics]] have come to embrace Lucian as "an early imperial paradigm of the 'ethno-cultural hybrid.{{'"}}{{sfn|Richter|2017|page=327}}