Author: Daniel Markovic
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047433661
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 190
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Book Description
Alleged incompatibility of Epicurus’ philosophy with rhetoric has led modern scholars to isolate rhetorical procedures in Lucretius’ De rerum natura and regard them as non-Epicurean, accessory features. This study of Lucretius’ rhetorical procedures is based on a wider understanding of the term rhetoric, not limited to the genre of oratory. In a fresh discussion of the questions of provenance and the role of the most important formal procedures of exposition in De rerum natura the author argues that instead of injecting rhetorical strategies from non-Epicurean sources, Lucretius in fact intensified rhetorical elements already present in the work of Epicurus. These elements are used for the purpose of explanation, and function as cognitive and mnemonic aids for the reader.
Author: Barnaby Taylor
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198754906
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 236
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Book Description
Lucretius' Epicurean poem De Rerum Natura ('On the Nature of Things'), written in the middle of the first century BC, made a fundamental and lasting contribution to the language of Latin philosophy. The style of De Rerum Natura is like nothing else in extant Latin: at once archaic and modern, Romanizing and Hellenizing, intimate and sublime, it draws on multiple literary genres and linguistic registers. This book offers a study of Lucretius' linguistic innovation and creativity. Lucretius is depicted as a linguistic trailblazer, extending and augmenting the technical language of Latin in order to describe the Epicurean universe of atoms and void in all its complexity and sublimity. A detailed understanding of the Epicurean linguistic theory brings with it a greater appreciation of Lucretius' own language. Accordingly, this book features an in-depth reconstruction of certain core features of Epicurean linguistic theory. Elements of Lucretius' style discussed include his attitudes to, and use of, figurative language (especially metaphor); his explorations, both explicit and implicit, of Latin etymology; his uses of Greek; and his creative deployment of compounds and prefixed words. His practice is related throughout not only to the underlying Epicurean theory but also to contemporary Roman attitudes to style and language. The result is a new reading of one of the greatest and most difficult works to survive from the Roman world.
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.
Author: Lee Fratantuono
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498511554
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 519
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Book Description
Lucretius’ philosophical epic De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) is a lengthy didactic and narrative celebration of the universe and, in particular, the world of nature and creation in which humanity finds its abode. This earliest surviving full scale epic poem from ancient Rome was of immense influence and significance to the development of the Latin epic tradition, and continues to challenge and haunt its readers to the present day. A Reading of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura offers a comprehensive commentary on this great work of Roman poetry and philosophy. Lee Fratantuono reveals Lucretius to be a poet with deep and abiding interest in the nature of the Roman identity as the children of both Venus (through Aeneas) and Mars (through Romulus); the consequences (both positive and negative) of descent from the immortal powers of love and war are explored in vivid epic narrative, as the poet progresses from his invocation to the mother of the children of Aeneas through to the burning funeral pyres of the plague at Athens. Lucretius’ epic offers the possibility of serenity and peaceful reflection on the mysteries of the nature of the world, even as it shatters any hope of immortality through its bleak vision of post mortem oblivion. And in the process of defining what it means both to be human and Roman, Lucretius offers a horrifying vision of the perils of excessive devotion both to the gods and our fellow men, a commentary on the nature of pietas that would serve as a warning for Virgil in his later depiction of the Trojan Aeneas.
Author: Titus Lucretius Carus
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Cosmology
Languages : en
Pages : 330
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Book Description
Author: Duncan F. Kennedy
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472112883
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 164
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Book Description
A clear, concise introduction to current debates on the relationship of representation and reality in science studies
Author: Titus Lucretius Carus
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 0856683094
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : la
Pages : 183
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Book Description
Book IV of Lucretius' great philosophical poem deals mainly with the psychology of sensation and thought. The heart of this book is a new text, incorporating the latest scholarship on the text of Lucretius, with a clear prose facing translation. The commentary concentrates on the thought of the text (relating it to other philosophers beside Epicurus) and the poetry of the Latin, placing the text in relation to Roman literature in general, and attempting to demonstrate the poetic genius of Lucretius. The introduction deals with the didactic tradition in ancient literature and Lucretius' place in it, the structure of De Rerum Natura, the salient features of the philosophy of Epicurus and the transmission of the text.
Author: Basil Dufallo
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197571808
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
Disorienting Empire is the first book to examine Republican Latin poetry's recurring interest in characters who become lost. Basil Dufallo explains the prevalence of this theme with reference to the rapid expansion of Rome's empire in the Middle and Late Republic. It was both a threatening and an enticing prospect, Dufallo argues, to imagine the ever-widening spaces of Roman power as a place where one could become disoriented, both in terms of geographical wandering and in a more abstract sense connected with identity and identification, especially as it concerned gender and sexuality. Plautus, Terence, Lucretius, and Catullus, as well as the "triumviral" Horace of Satires, book 1, all reveal an interest in such experiences, particularly in relation to journeys into the Greek world from which these writers drew their source material. Fragmentary authors such as Naevius, Ennius, and Lucilius, as well as prose historians including Polybius and Livy, add depth and context to the discussion. Setting the Republican poets in dialogue with queer theory and postcolonial theory, Dufallo brings to light both anxieties latent in the theme and the exuberance it suggests over new creative possibilities opened up by reorienting oneself toward new horizons, new identifications-by discovering with pleasure that one could be other than one thought. Further, in showing that the Republican poets had been experimenting with such techniques for generations before the Augustan Age, Disorienting Empire offers its close readings as a means of interpreting afresh Aeneas' wandering journey in Vergil's Aeneid.
Author: Johannes Jacobus Louis Smolenaars
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004171347
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 289
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Book Description
The Roman poet P. Papinius Statius (ca. 45-96) is the author of two epics (the "Thebaid" and the unfinished "Achilleid") and a large corpus of occasional verse ("Silvae"). This poetry, long seen as derivative or decadent, is increasingly appreciated for the daring and originality of its responses both to the Greek and Latin literary tradition and to the contemporary Roman world. This volume offers the papers delivered at a symposium on Statius (Amsterdam 2005) by leading scholars in the field from Europe and North America. These papers demonstrate the fascination of Statius' poetry on account of the poet's vast knowledge of Greek and Latin tragedy, his rapid narrative, psychological acumen, brilliant eulogies, and pessimistic views on gods and men. The focus of the collection is on literary technique in the "Thebaid," on socio-historical aspects of the "Silvae," and on the reception of Statius in European literature and scholarship.
Author: Errietta M. A. Bissa
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004175040
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 285
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Book Description
Trade was a necessity in the ancient Greek world, yet the prevalent scholarly view is that Greek states intervened in foreign trade only rarely and sporadically. This book studies four necessary commodities, gold, silver, ship-building timber and grain, from production through export to import. Through the re-evaluation of known evidence and the presentation of new avenues of research, the book shows that Greek and non-Greek governments in the archaic and classical periods intervened and involved themselves greatly in foreign trade. The book offers the student of the Greek economy a fresh perspective on state intervention in trade and the ways in which intervention worked in the Greek world.
