Search results for "Lucretius"

Between Atoms and Humours. Lucretius' Didactic Poetry as a Model of Integrated and Bifocal Physiology

2012

Lucretius has often been regarded as one of the fathers of modern science, and also in recent years several studies have explored his influence far beyond a merely literary perspective. In this paper I analyse specifically the importance of the poet's 'eclectic' attitude in physiology from the point of view of his 'Fortleben' in early modern thought. I suggest that the typical eclectic combination of physics and biology, atomism and macroscopy, which the 'De rerum natura' shows in its didactic structure both through its images and even more through its conscious scientific reflection, built an attractive basis for attempts in the modern period at harmonising corpuscularian theories and qual…

Epicureanism

2019

A brief sketch of the reception of Epicureanism in early modern natural philosophy and metaphysics (15th-18th centuries)

Non est pura voluptas. Fisiologia e psicopatologia dell’amplesso in Kafka e Lucrezio

2015

Due brani del romanzo di Kafka Il castello descrivono gli amplessi del protagonista K. con una servetta dell’ostello presso cui egli si trova ospitato. Le due scene e le espressioni usate dallo scrittore per descriverle rimandano a due noti brani del De rerum natura di Lucrezio. Non è facile stabilire se si tratti di una ripresa consapevole (l’“arte allusiva” di Pasquali) o di una semplice reminiscenza, ma la circostanza costituisce in ogni caso la testimonianza di un’affinità spirituale fra i due autori. Two passages from Kafka's novel The Castle describe the embraces of the protagonist K. with a servant of the hostel where he is staying. The two scenes and the expressions used by the writ…

Su alcune imitazioni di Lucrezio in un capitolo dei Florida apuleiani

1999

A View from the Garden: Contemplative Isolation and Constructive Sociability in Lucretius and in the Epicurean Tradition

2021

It is often assumed that Epicurean philosophy and its foremost Roman prophet, T. Lucretius Carus, adopted a deeply hostile attitude towards both politics and religion. Individualistic (or even solipsistic) interpretations of Epicureanism – as well as of the Epicurean catechism of De Rerum Natura – have long co-existed with, and provided support to, the claim that the Epicureans attached little value to religious experiences. In the present paper, I shall argue that, in this and many other respects, the modern reception of Epicureanism – with its brave aspirations after the liberation of science from social and religious restraints – has had undue influence on our understanding of De Rerum N…

Lucrezio e Carlo Magno. A proposito dell’epistola di Dungal sulle eclissi (MGH Epistolae IV Karolini aevi II, pp. 570-578)

2021

It is generally assumed that Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura disappeared with the end of antiquity and did not reappear until Poggio Bracciolini’s rediscovery (1417). Yet, the oldest and most valuable manuscripts of DRN were copied in the Carolingian age and reflect a high degree of attention to Lucretius’ text and its content. In the present paper, I argue that by studying more carefully the origin and diffusion of Lucretian manuscripts in Carolingian Europe, it is possible to detect an almost unrecognized connection between textual tradition, grammatical erudition, and literary imitatio. In the first section, I offer an overview of the reception of DRN in such representative ninth-century writ…

The Body of the Soul. Lucretian Echoes in the Renaissance Theories on the Psychic Substance and its Organic Repartition

2015

In the 16th and 17th centuries, when Aristotelianism still was the leading current of natural philosophy and atomistic theories began to arise, Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura stood out as an attractive and dangerous model. The present paper reassesses several relevant aspects of Lucretius’ materialistic psychology by focusing on the problem of the soul’s repartition through the limbs discussed in Book 3. A very successful Lucretian image serves as fil rouge throughout this survey: the description of a snake chopped up, with its pieces moving on the ground (Lucretius DRN 1969, 3.657–669). The paper’s first section sets the poet’s theory against the background of ancient psychology, pointing out …

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…

Vox Naturae: The Myth of Animal Nature in the Latin Roman Republic

2016

The paper examines the representation of animals as embodiment of nature in the culture of the late Roman republic. By discussing a selection of passages from Sallust, Cicero and Lucretius in conjunction with other Greek and Latin sources, the paper shows that the typically Western myth of 'animal nature' - the cultural belief that animal mirror a perennial state of nature, as opposed to human society - played a very important role in the ethical debate of the first century BC and took in this period a form which was bound to influence the centuries to come.