Cosmic Viewpoint - A Study of Seneca''s Natural Questions

Zusatztext Offers an extremely convincing articulation of [Naturales Quaestiones's] moral prefaces and interludes with the strictly technical sections of the book. Informationen zum Autor Gareth D. Williams is Violin Family Professor of Classics at Columbia University. His most recent book, co-edited with Katharina Volk, is Roman Reflections. Klappentext Seneca's Natural Questions is an eight-book disquisition on the nature of meteorological phenomena, ranging inter alia from rainbows to earthquakes, from comets to the winds, from the causes of snow and hail to the reasons why the Nile floods in summer. Much of this material had been treated in the earlier Greco-Roman meteorological tradition, but what notoriously sets Seneca's writing apart is his insertion of extended moralizing sections within his technical discourse. How, if at all, are these outbursts against the luxury and vice that are apparently rampant in Seneca's first-century CE Rome to be reconciled with his main meteorological agenda? Zusammenfassung The Cosmic Viewpoint examines the literary and philosophical qualities essential to Seneca's art of science in his Natural Questions. Seneca's meteorological theme raises our gaze from a terrestrial level to a higher, more intuitive plane. Inhaltsverzeichnis Abbreviations Introduction I. Interiority and Cosmic Consciousness in the Natural Questions II. Seneca's Moralizing Interludes III. The Cataclysm and the Nile IV. The Rhetoric of Science V. Seneca on Winds VI. Earthquakes, Consolation, and the Senecan Sublime VII. Seneca on Comets and Ancient Cometary Theory VIII. Seneca on Lightning and Divination Epilogue Bibliography Index of Passages General Index Index of Latin Words Index of Greek Words

Product details

• Authors: Gareth D Williams, Gareth D. Williams, Gareth D. (Violin Family Professor of Cl Williams, Gareth D. (Violin Family Professor of Classics Williams
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 12.05.2016
• EAN: 9780190490980
• ISBN: 978-0-19-049098-0
• No. of pages: 410
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Antiquity; Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Natural sciences (general); SCIENCE / History, Latin, HISTORY / Ancient / General, LITERARY CRITICISM / Ancient & Classical, PHILOSOPHY / History & Surveys / Ancient & Classical, History of Science, Literary studies: classical, early & medieval, Ancient History, Classical history / classical civilisation, Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers, Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers, Ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, Literary studies: ancient, classical and medieval, Western philosophy: Ancient, to c 500, LITERARY CRITICISM / Novel as Form