Lucretian Receptions in Prose

Lucretian Receptions in Prose PDF Author: George Kazantzidis
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3111443728
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
The examination of Lucretian reception in Latin poetry has been served well by scholars. Lucretius’ presence in later prose writers, on the other hand, is a topic that warrants more investigation. Susanne Gatzemeier’s 2013 monograph (Ut ait Lucretius: Die Lukrezrezeption in der lateinischen Prosa bis Laktanz) is an invaluable contribution to the topic but by no means exhaustive either in terms of the potential intertextualities it traces or in terms of its interpretive methods and insights. At the same time, recent studies implicate Lucretius’ name in discussions of prose writers who were not that often thought in the past to have engaged with the De Rerum Natura in an active way. Caesar and Livy but also Vitruvius and Tacitus are some good examples. The present volume taps into this discussion and broadens further our understanding of Lucretian reception in prose writers, including Cicero, Celsus, Seneca the Younger, Quintilian, Pliny the Younger, Plutarch and Lactantius. Building on the vast scholarship on the significance of Lucretius as a model for later poets, the volume sheds new light on the De Rerum Natura’s afterlife by looking at its presence in philosophical prose, medical writing, oratory, epistolary writing and Christian theology.

Lucretian Receptions in Prose

Lucretian Receptions in Prose PDF Author: George Kazantzidis
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3111443728
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Get Book Here

Book Description
The examination of Lucretian reception in Latin poetry has been served well by scholars. Lucretius’ presence in later prose writers, on the other hand, is a topic that warrants more investigation. Susanne Gatzemeier’s 2013 monograph (Ut ait Lucretius: Die Lukrezrezeption in der lateinischen Prosa bis Laktanz) is an invaluable contribution to the topic but by no means exhaustive either in terms of the potential intertextualities it traces or in terms of its interpretive methods and insights. At the same time, recent studies implicate Lucretius’ name in discussions of prose writers who were not that often thought in the past to have engaged with the De Rerum Natura in an active way. Caesar and Livy but also Vitruvius and Tacitus are some good examples. The present volume taps into this discussion and broadens further our understanding of Lucretian reception in prose writers, including Cicero, Celsus, Seneca the Younger, Quintilian, Pliny the Younger, Plutarch and Lactantius. Building on the vast scholarship on the significance of Lucretius as a model for later poets, the volume sheds new light on the De Rerum Natura’s afterlife by looking at its presence in philosophical prose, medical writing, oratory, epistolary writing and Christian theology.

Lucretian Receptions

Lucretian Receptions PDF Author: Philip Hardie
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521760416
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
Lucretius' 'De rerum natura', one of the greatest Latin poems, worked a powerful fascination on Virgil and Horace, and continued to be an important model for later poets in antiquity and after, including Milton. This innovative set of studies on the reception of Lucretius is organized round three major themes: history and time, the sublime, and knowledge. The 'De rerum natura' was foundational for Augustan poets' dealings with history and time in the new age of the principate. It is also a major document in the history of the sublime; Virgil and Horace engage with the Lucretian sublime in ways that exercised a major influence on the sublime in later antique and Renaissance literature. The 'De rerum natura' presents a confident account of the ultimate truths of the universe; later didactic and epic poets respond with varying degrees of certainty or uncertainty to the challenge of Lucretius' Epicurean gospel.

The Lucretian Renaissance

The Lucretian Renaissance PDF Author: Gerard Passannante
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226648494
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
With The Lucretian Renaissance, Gerard Passannante offers a radical rethinking of a familiar narrative: the rise of materialism in early modern Europe. Passannante begins by taking up the ancient philosophical notion that the world is composed of two fundamental opposites: atoms, as the philosopher Epicurus theorized, intrinsically unchangeable and moving about the void; and the void itself, or nothingness. Passannante considers the fact that this strain of ancient Greek philosophy survived and was transmitted to the Renaissance primarily by means of a poem that had seemingly been lost—a poem insisting that the letters of the alphabet are like the atoms that make up the universe. By tracing this elemental analogy through the fortunes of Lucretius’s On the Nature of Things, Passannante argues that, long before it took on its familiar shape during the Scientific Revolution, the philosophy of atoms and the void reemerged in the Renaissance as a story about reading and letters—a story that materialized in texts, in their physical recomposition, and in their scattering. From the works of Virgil and Macrobius to those of Petrarch, Poliziano, Lambin, Montaigne, Bacon, Spenser, Gassendi, Henry More, and Newton, The Lucretian Renaissance recovers a forgotten history of materialism in humanist thought and scholarly practice and asks us to reconsider one of the most enduring questions of the period: what does it mean for a text, a poem, and philosophy to be “reborn”?

Lucretius Poet and Philosopher

Lucretius Poet and Philosopher PDF Author: Philip R. Hardie
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110673517
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 493

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Book Description
Six hundred years after Poggio’s retrieval of the De rerum natura, and with the recent surge of interest in Lucretius and his influence, there has never been a better time to fully assess and recognize the shaping force of his thought and poetry over European culture from antiquity to modern times. This volume offers a multidisciplinary and updated overview of Lucretius as philosopher and as poet, with special attention to how these two aspects interact. The volume includes 18 contributions by established as well as early career scholars working on Lucretius’ philosophical and poetic work, and his reception both in ancient and early modern times. All the chapters present new and original research. Section I explores core issues of Epicurean-Lucretian epistemology and ethics. Section II expounds much new material on ancient response to and reception of Lucretius. Section III presents new material and analysis on the immediate, fraught early modern reception of the poem. Section IV offers a wide collection of new and original papers on Lucretius’ fortunes in the period from Machiavelli up to Victorian times. Section V explores little known aspects of the iconographical and biographical motifs related to the De rerum natura.

The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius

The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius PDF Author: Stuart Gillespie
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139827529
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 612

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Book Description
Lucretius' didactic poem De rerum natura ('On the Nature of Things') is an impassioned and visionary presentation of the materialist philosophy of Epicurus, and one of the most powerful poetic texts of antiquity. After its rediscovery in 1417 it became a controversial and seminal work in successive phases of literary history, the history of science, and the Enlightenment. In this 2007 Cambridge Companion experts in the history of literature, philosophy and science discuss the poem in its ancient contexts and in its reception both as a literary text and as a vehicle for progressive ideas. The Companion is designed both as an accessible handbook for the general reader who wishes to learn about Lucretius, and as a series of stimulating essays for students of classical antiquity and its reception. It is completely accessible to the reader who has only read Lucretius in translation.

Lucretius on Creation and Evolution

Lucretius on Creation and Evolution PDF Author: Gordon Lindsay Campbell
Publisher: Oxford Classical Monographs
ISBN: 9780199263967
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 406

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Book Description
Lucretius' account of the origin of life, the origin of species, and human prehistory is the longest and most detailed account extant from the ancient world. It gives an anti-teleological mechanistic theory of zoogony and the origin of species that does away with the need for any divine aidor design in the process, and accordingly it has been seen as a forerunner of Darwin's theory of evolution. This commentary locates Lucretius in both the ancient and modern contexts, and treats Lucretius' ideas as very much alive rather than as historical concepts. The recent revival of creationismmakes this study particularly relevant to contemporary debate, and indeed, many of the central questions posed by creationists are those Lucretius attempts to answer.

Empedocles Redivivus

Empedocles Redivivus PDF Author: Myrto Garani
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135859833
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
This book consists of a thorough study of Lucretius’ poetic and philosophical debt to Empedocles, focusing on their respective uses of analogy and examining how both poets turn these poetic techniques to use in their epistemological approaches to nature.

Lucretius in the Modern World

Lucretius in the Modern World PDF Author: W.R. Johnson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472502272
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description
Lucretius' On the Nature of Things - one of the glories of Latin literature - provides a vivid poetic exposition of the doctrines of the Greek atomist, Epicurus. The poem played a crucial role in the reinvention of science in the seventeenth century, its influence on the French Enlightenment was powerful and pervasive, and it became a major battlefield in the wars of religion with science in nineteenth-century England. But in the twentieth century, despite its vital contributions to modern thought and civilisation, it has been largely neglected by common readers and scientists alike. This book offers an extensive description of the poem, with special emphasis on its cheerful version of materialism and on its attempt to devise an ethical system that suits such a universe. It surveys major relevant texts form the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Dryden, Diderot, Voltaire, Tennyson, Santayana) and speculates on why Lucretius and the ancient scientific tradition he championed has become marginalised in the twentieth century. It closes with a discussion of what value the poem has for students of science and technology in the new century: what advice it has to offer us about how to go about reinventing our machines and our morality.

Approaches to Lucretius

Approaches to Lucretius PDF Author: Donncha O'Rourke
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108421962
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 339

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Book Description
Takes stock of existing approaches in the interpretation of Lucretius, innovates within these, and advances in new directions.

The Cambridge Companion to the Romantic Sublime

The Cambridge Companion to the Romantic Sublime PDF Author: Cian Duffy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316515915
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
This is the only collection of its kind to focus on one of the most important aspects of the cultural history of the Romantic period, its sources, and its afterlives. Multidisciplinary in approach, the volume examines the variety of areas of enquiry and genres of cultural productivity in which the sublime played a substantial role during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. With impressive international scope, this Companion considers the Romantic sublime in both European and American contexts and features essays by leading scholars from a range of national backgrounds and subject specialisms, including state-of-the-art perspectives in digital and environmental humanities. An accessible, wide-ranging, and thorough introduction, aimed at researchers, students, and general readers alike, and including extensive suggestions for further reading, The Cambridge Companion to the Romantic Sublime is the go-to book on the subject.