Approaches to Lucretius - Traditions and Innovations in Reading the De Rerum Natura

List of contents

Introduction; Part I. The Text: 1. Critical responses to the most difficult textual problem in Lucretius David Butterfield; Part II. Lucretius and his Readers: 2. Reading the 'implied author' in Lucretius' De Rerum Natura Nora Goldschmidt; 3. Common ground in Lucretius' De Rerum Natura Barnaby Taylor; 4. Coming to know Epicurus' truth: distributed cognition in Lucretius' De Rerum Natura Fabio Tutrone; Part III. The Word and the World: 5. Infinity, enclosure and false closure in Lucretius' De Rerum Natura Donncha O'Rourke; 6. Lucretian echoes: sound as metaphor for literary allusion in De Rerum Natura 4.549-94 Jason Nethercut; 7. Saussure's cahiers and Lucretius' elementa: a re-consideration of the letters-atoms analogy Wilson H. Shearin; Part IV. Literary and Philosophical Sources: 8. Arguing over text(s): master-texts vs intertexts in the criticism of Lucretius Andrew Morrison; 9. Lucretius and the philosophical use of literary persuasion Tim O'Keefe; 10. The rising and setting soul in Lucretius, De Rerum Natura 3 Emma Gee; Part V. Worldviews: 11. Was Memmius a good king? Joseph Farrell; 12. A tribute to a hero: Marx's interpretation of Epicurus in his dissertation Elizabeth Asmis; 13. Plato and Lucretius on the theoretical subject Duncan F. Kennedy.

About the author

Donncha O'Rourke is Lecturer in Classics at the University of Edinburgh. He is author of Propertius and the Virgilian Sensibility (forthcoming) and co-editor of Didactic Poetry of Greece, Rome and Beyond: Knowledge, Power, Tradition (2019).

Summary

Re-examines a range of critical approaches to which this influential poem has given rise and which in turn have shaped its interpretation, including textual criticism, the text's strategies for engaging the reader with its author and his message, 'atomology', intertextuality, and the political and ideological questions that the poem raises.

Product details

• Authors: EDITED BY DONNCHA O', Donncha (University of Edinburgh) O''''rourke
• Assisted by: Donncha O'Rourke (Editor), Donncha (University of Edinburgh) O'Rourke (Editor)
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.07.2020
• EAN: 9781108421966
• ISBN: 978-1-108-42196-6
• No. of pages: 320
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Philosophy: antiquity to present day; Latin, LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Ancient & Classical, Literary studies: classical, early & medieval, Ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, Literary studies: ancient, classical and medieval, Western philosophy: Ancient, to c 500