SOURCE: "I: Lucian: the Man and the Work—Ingenuity and Humour" in Lucian and His Influence in Europe, The University of North Carolina Press, 1979, pp. 20-45.

In the following excerpt, Robinson discusses Lucian's use of such literary forms as parody, pastiche, and satire, as well as his handling of invective, burlesque, and irony.

… If there is one relatively clear-cut division between the works, it is quite simply between those whose principal effect is humour, and those whose principal effect is ingenuity. The second category contains the eleven prolaliai and the pieces which can be assigned to one rhetorical genre, Disowned, The Tyrannicide, Phalaris I and II, In Praise of my Country, The Fly (whose paradoxes are clever, not funny) and The Consonants at Law, where the fantasy of the situation is subordinate in interest to the linguistic display. With these can be classed Anacharsis, Toxaris, Essays in Portraiture...