Includes bibliographical references (pages 282-312) and indexes.
Contents:
Critical responses to the most difficult textual problem in Lucretius / David Butterfield -- Reading the implied author in Lucretius' De rerum natura / Nora Goldschmidt -- Common ground in Lucretius' De rerum natura / Barnaby Taylor -- Coming to know Epicurus' truth: distributed cognition in Lucretius' De rerum natura / Fabio Tutrone -- Infinity, enclosure, and false closure in Lucretius' De rerum natura / Donncha O'Rourke -- Lucretian echoes: sound as metaphor for literary allusion in De rerum natura 4.549-94 / Jason Nethercut -- Saussure's cahiers and Lucretius' elementa: a reconsideration of the letters-atoms analogy / Wilson H. Shearin -- Arguing over text(s): master texts vs. intertexts in the criticism of Lucretius / A. D. Morrison -- Lucretius and the philosophical use of literary persuasion / Tim O'Keefe -- The rising and setting soul in Lucretius, De rerum natura 3 / Emma Gee -- Was Memmius a good king? / Joseph Farrell -- A tribute to a hero: Marx's interpretation of Epicurus in his dissertation / Elizabeth Asmis -- Plato and Lucretius on the theoretical subject / Duncan F. Kennedy.
Summary:
"Both in antiquity and ever since the Renaissance Lucretius' De Rerum Natura has been admired - and condemned - for its startling poetry, its evangelical faith in ma causation, and its seductive advocacy of the Epicurean good life. Approaches to Lucretius assembles an international team of classicists and philosophers to take stock of 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, the 'atomology' that posits a correlation of the letters of the poem with the atoms of the universe, the literary and philosophical intertexts that mediate the poem, and the political and ideological questions that it raises. Thirteen essays take up a variety of positions within these traditions of interpretation, innovating within them and advancing beyond them in new directions"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.