Arma sumpserit (Lucan. 7, 259-260). Maradona, Malvinas and the art of safe criticism

Abstract

The purpose of this research article is to study the discurse strategies used by Frederick Ahl in the academic paper entitled “The hand of God: Diego Maradona and the divine nature of cheating in Classical Antiquity”, establishing their convergences with certain poetic resources and rhetorical devices described by him in his researches on classical literature. I will try to prove how, in order to study the heroized goal of Maradona against England, the author sets up a larger interpretative framework, in which mythological references function as veiled allusions to the South Atlantic conflict.