Search results for " didactic poetry"
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Granting Epicurean Wisdom at Rome: Exchange and Reciprocity in Lucretius' Didactic (DRN 1.921-950)
2018
In the first book of De Rerum Natura, Lucretius describes his didactic undertaking as a metaphorical process of gift exchange (1.50-53): the obscure and salvific precepts of Epicurean philosophy, skilfully arranged in hexameters, are said to be 'gifts' (dona) that the poet has prepared with loyal zeal (studio fideli). Such a suggestive depiction of Lucretius' relationship to the work's dedicatee, Gaius Memmius, seems to reflect a relevant functional pattern of De Rerum Natura as a coherent system of communication strategies, variously readapting social models and cultural traditions. The present paper employs the interpretative approach of gift theories – the thought-provoking theories elab…
Varcare i confini?: ‘Palinsesti didascalici’ nel terzo libro delle Elegie di Properzio
2020
Although it is objectively difficult to prepare a study on the relation- ships between Propertius’s elegies and the didactic poetry, a help- ful hint for the interpretation is given by the elegy 3, 5, in which the Umbrian poet expresses the desire to study, in his old age, the natu- ral phenomena, extending his study until the interpretation of the underworld. Indeed, in 13th and 22nd elegy of the 3rd book, which is the most experimental of the collection, Propertius will measure against the didactic poems written by Lucretius and Virgil, not cross- ing the boundaries of the genre of the elegy, but occasionally adopt- ing and re-elaborating in a original and explicit way, some elements from…