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Author: Patrick Glauthier
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019778755X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 311
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Book Description
The Scientific Sublime in Imperial Rome charts the role of the sublime in first-century debates about how and why we investigate the natural world. It shows how the sublimity of the study of nature--the scientific sublime--animates Manilius' Astronomica, Seneca's Natural Questions, Lucan's Civil War, and the anonymous Aetna, and explores how these authors inflect and deploy the scientific sublime in their respective historical and socio-political contexts. Imbued with the triumphal optimism of the Augustan moment, Manilius takes the reader on a rollercoaster ride through the expanses of the heavens, reveling in the infinite dimensions of the cosmos and the astounding ability of his mathematical calculations to uncover the mind of god; this is the ultimate intellectual pursuit. The instability and paranoia of the Neronian period fundamentally compromise this posture. In Natural Questions, Seneca rejects Manilius' celestial adventure and redirects the reader's gaze to atmospheric phenomena. The turbulence and tumult of meteorological inquiry do not lead to certain knowledge, but Seneca hopes that its electric vitality might counteract the allure of morally corrupt pastimes and of political power itself. For Lucan, the Manilian and Senecan projects are delusional fantasies. The study of nature, stripped of the illusion that it serves some higher purpose, constitutes a distraction from the urgent necessity of civil war, and those characters who understand nature's mechanics appear laughably irrelevant or downright deadly. In the early Flavian period, the Aetna poet rehabilitates the ecstatic charge of natural inquiry. Dismissing the lofty aspirations of Manilius and Seneca, the author careens over Sicily's jagged terrain and plunges the reader into the depths of the earth searching for terrestrial knowledge. By the poem's conclusion, however, sheer awe before the amphitheatrical spectacle of nature supplants the rush of philosophical analysis as the goal of studying the earth; this attitude connects the poet with Longinus and the Elder Pliny. Through close readings, this book tells a new story about the study of nature at Rome. It locates the sublimity of that study at the center of early imperial Latin literature and thereby renders the classical sublime more expansive, dynamic, and contested.
Author: Patrick Glauthier
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019778755X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 311
Get Book Here
Book Description
The Scientific Sublime in Imperial Rome charts the role of the sublime in first-century debates about how and why we investigate the natural world. It shows how the sublimity of the study of nature--the scientific sublime--animates Manilius' Astronomica, Seneca's Natural Questions, Lucan's Civil War, and the anonymous Aetna, and explores how these authors inflect and deploy the scientific sublime in their respective historical and socio-political contexts. Imbued with the triumphal optimism of the Augustan moment, Manilius takes the reader on a rollercoaster ride through the expanses of the heavens, reveling in the infinite dimensions of the cosmos and the astounding ability of his mathematical calculations to uncover the mind of god; this is the ultimate intellectual pursuit. The instability and paranoia of the Neronian period fundamentally compromise this posture. In Natural Questions, Seneca rejects Manilius' celestial adventure and redirects the reader's gaze to atmospheric phenomena. The turbulence and tumult of meteorological inquiry do not lead to certain knowledge, but Seneca hopes that its electric vitality might counteract the allure of morally corrupt pastimes and of political power itself. For Lucan, the Manilian and Senecan projects are delusional fantasies. The study of nature, stripped of the illusion that it serves some higher purpose, constitutes a distraction from the urgent necessity of civil war, and those characters who understand nature's mechanics appear laughably irrelevant or downright deadly. In the early Flavian period, the Aetna poet rehabilitates the ecstatic charge of natural inquiry. Dismissing the lofty aspirations of Manilius and Seneca, the author careens over Sicily's jagged terrain and plunges the reader into the depths of the earth searching for terrestrial knowledge. By the poem's conclusion, however, sheer awe before the amphitheatrical spectacle of nature supplants the rush of philosophical analysis as the goal of studying the earth; this attitude connects the poet with Longinus and the Elder Pliny. Through close readings, this book tells a new story about the study of nature at Rome. It locates the sublimity of that study at the center of early imperial Latin literature and thereby renders the classical sublime more expansive, dynamic, and contested.
Author: Alan G. Gross
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190637781
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 329
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Book Description
The sublime evokes our awe, our terror, and our wonder. Applied first in ancient Greece to the heights of literary expression, in the 18th-century the sublime was extended to nature and to the sciences, enterprises that viewed the natural world as a manifestation of God's goodness, power, and wisdom. In The Scientific Sublime, Alan Gross reveals the modern-day sublime in popular science. He shows how the great popular scientists of our time--Richard Feynman, Stephen Hawking, Steven Weinberg, Brian Greene, Lisa Randall, Rachel Carson, Stephen Jay Gould, Steven Pinker, Richard Dawkins, and E. O. Wilson--evoke the sublime in response to fundamental questions: How did the universe begin? How did life? How did language? These authors maintain a tradition initiated by Joseph Addison, Edmund Burke, Immanuel Kant, and Adam Smith, towering 18th-century figures who adapted the literary sublime first to nature, then to science--though with one crucial difference: religion has been replaced wholly by science. In a final chapter, Gross explores science's attack on religion, an assault that attempts to sweep permanently under the rug two questions science cannot answer: What is the meaning of life? What is the meaning of the good life?
Author: Patrick Glauthier
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780197787557
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
The Scientific Sublime in Imperial Rome charts the significance of the sublime in first-century debates about how and why we investigate the natural world. By connecting Manilius' Astronomica, Seneca's Natural Questions, Lucan's Civil War, and the anonymous Aetna for the first time, it tells a new story about the study of nature at Rome, locates the sublimity of that study at the center of early imperial Latin literature, and thereby renders the classical sublime more expansive, dynamic, and contested.
Author: Kate Gilhuly
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1003813704
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 260
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Book Description
The essays in this collection explore various various models of representing temporality in ancient Greek and Roman literature to elucidate how structures of time communicate meaning, as well as the way that the cultural impact of measured time is reflected in ancient texts. This collection serves as a meditation on the different ways that cosmological and experiential time are construed, measured, and manipulated in Greek and Latin literature. It explores both the kinds of time deemed worthy of measurement, as well as time that escapes notice. Likewise, it interrogates how linear time and its representation become politicized and leveraged in the service of emerging and dominant power structures. These essays showcase various contemporary theoretical approaches to temporality in order to build bridges and expose chasms between ancient and modern ideologies of time. Some of the areas explored include the philosophical and social implications of time that is not measured, the insights and limitations provided by queer theory for an investigation of the way sex and gender relate to time, the relationship of time to power, the extent to which temporal discourses intersect with spatial constructs, and finally an exploration of experiences that exceed the boundaries of time. Making Time for Greek and Roman Literature is of interest to scholars of time and temporality in the ancient world, as well as those working on time and temporality in English literature, comparative literature, history, sociology, and gender and sexuality. It is also suitable for those working on Greek and Roman literature and culture more broadly.
Author: Timothy M. Costelloe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521143675
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 319
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Book Description
This volume offers readers a unique and comprehensive overview of different theoretical and interdisciplinary perspectives on 'the sublime'.
Author: John Lord
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Rome
Languages : en
Pages : 618
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Book Description
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 428
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Book Description
Author: Friedrich von Schlegel
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literature
Languages : en
Pages : 472
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Book Description
Author: Friedrich : von Schlegel
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 478
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Book Description
Author: Jason König
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691238499
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 480
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Book Description
A cultural and literary history of mountains in classical antiquity The mountainous character of the Mediterranean was a crucial factor in the history of the ancient Greek and Roman world. The Folds of Olympus is a cultural and literary history that explores the important role mountains played in Greek and Roman religious, military, and economic life, as well as in the identity of communities over a millennium—from Homer to the early Christian saints. Aimed at readers of ancient history and literature as well as those interested in mountains and the environment, the book offers a powerful account of the landscape at the heart of much Greek and Roman culture. Jason König charts the importance of mountains in religion and pilgrimage, the aesthetic vision of mountains in art and literature, the place of mountains in conquest and warfare, and representations of mountain life. He shows how mountains were central to the way in which the inhabitants of the ancient Mediterranean understood the boundaries between the divine and the human, and the limits of human knowledge and control. He also argues that there is more continuity than normally assumed between ancient descriptions of mountains and modern accounts of the picturesque and the sublime. Offering a unique perspective on the history of classical culture, The Folds of Olympus is also a resoundingly original contribution to the literature on mountains.
