Of the Nature of Things
Author: Titus Lucretius Carus
Publisher:
Published: 1921
Total Pages: 330
ISBN-13:
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Lucretius De Rerum Natura IV
Author: Titus Lucretius Carus
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Published: 1986
Total Pages: 183
ISBN-13: 0856683094
DOWNLOAD EBOOKBook IV of Lucretius' great philosophical poem deals mainly with the psychology of sensation and thought. The heart of this book is a new text, incorporating the latest scholarship on the text of Lucretius, with a clear prose facing translation. The commentary concentrates on the thought of the text (relating it to other philosophers beside Epicurus) and the poetry of the Latin, placing the text in relation to Roman literature in general, and attempting to demonstrate the poetic genius of Lucretius. The introduction deals with the didactic tradition in ancient literature and Lucretius' place in it, the structure of De Rerum Natura, the salient features of the philosophy of Epicurus and the transmission of the text.
Introduction to Lucretius
Author: A. P. Sinker
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2013-08-22
Total Pages: 171
ISBN-13: 1107621186
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book provides an overview of Lucretius' philosophical poem 'De rerum natura' intended to clarify the poem's overarching themes to a first-time reader. It also gives a brief running commentary on the individual books as well as more detailed notes on selected passages, which are reproduced in the original Latin.
Lucretius and the Language of Nature
Author: Barnaby Taylor
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 2020-06-05
Total Pages: 236
ISBN-13: 0198754906
DOWNLOAD EBOOKLucretius' Epicurean poem De Rerum Natura ('On the Nature of Things'), written in the middle of the first century BC, made a fundamental and lasting contribution to the language of Latin philosophy. The style of De Rerum Natura is like nothing else in extant Latin: at once archaic and modern, Romanizing and Hellenizing, intimate and sublime, it draws on multiple literary genres and linguistic registers. This book offers a study of Lucretius' linguistic innovation and creativity. Lucretius is depicted as a linguistic trailblazer, extending and augmenting the technical language of Latin in order to describe the Epicurean universe of atoms and void in all its complexity and sublimity. A detailed understanding of the Epicurean linguistic theory brings with it a greater appreciation of Lucretius' own language. Accordingly, this book features an in-depth reconstruction of certain core features of Epicurean linguistic theory. Elements of Lucretius' style discussed include his attitudes to, and use of, figurative language (especially metaphor); his explorations, both explicit and implicit, of Latin etymology; his uses of Greek; and his creative deployment of compounds and prefixed words. His practice is related throughout not only to the underlying Epicurean theory but also to contemporary Roman attitudes to style and language. The result is a new reading of one of the greatest and most difficult works to survive from the Roman world.
Lucretius and Shakespeare on the Nature of Things
Author: Richard Allen Shoaf
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Published: 2014-10-16
Total Pages: 165
ISBN-13: 1443869538
DOWNLOAD EBOOKLucretius and Shakespeare on the Nature of Things maps large, new vistas for understanding the relationship between De rerum natura and Shakespeare’s works. In chapters on six important plays across the canon (King Lear, Macbeth, Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice, The Tempest, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream), it demonstrates that Shakespeare articulates his erotics of being, his “great creating nature” (The Winter’s Tale), by drawing on imagery he learned from Ovid and other classical poets, but especially from Lucretius, in his powerful epic that celebrates Venus and her endless creativity. Responding to Lucretius’s widely admired Latinity in his exposition of the life of man in nature, Shakespeare emerges as an early modern materialist who writes poetry that is effectively “atomic,” marked (as we might say today) by fission (hendiadys, for example) and fusion (synoeciosis, for example), joining and splitting, splitting and joining language and character as no other poet has ever done – To give away yourself keeps yourself still; My grave is like to be my wedding bed; I begin/To doubt the equivocation of the fiend/That lies like truth. Readers of Shoaf’s book will encounter anew, through both fresh evidence and close reading, Shakespeare’s universally acknowledged commitment to the art of nature and the nature of art. With Lucretius’s poetry as inspiration, Shakespeare becomes the poet of the material, both in art and in nature, immensely creative with his dædala lingua like dædala natura – his wonder-crafting tongue like wonder-working nature.
Virgil on the Nature of Things
Author: Monica R. Gale
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2000-11-09
Total Pages: 339
ISBN-13: 1139428470
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe Georgics has for many years been a source of fierce controversy among scholars of Latin literature. Is the work optimistic or pessimistic, pro- or anti-Augustan? Should we read it as a eulogy or a bitter critique of Rome and her imperial ambitions? This book suggests that the ambiguity of the poem is the product of a complex and thorough-going engagement with earlier writers in the didactic tradition: Hesiod, Aratus and - above all - Lucretius. Drawing on both traditional, philological approaches to allusion, and modern theories of intertextuality, it shows how the world-views of the earlier poets are subjected to scrutiny and brought into conflict with each other. Detailed consideration of verbal parallels and of Lucretian themes, imagery and structural patterns in the Georgics forms the basis for a reading of Virgil's poem as an extended meditation on the relations between the individual and society, the gods and the natural environment.
On the Nature of Things
Author: Titus Lucretius Carus
Publisher:
Published: 1921
Total Pages: 320
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKOn the Nature of the Universe
Author: Lucretius
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2008-10-09
Total Pages: 816
ISBN-13: 019162327X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK`Therefore this terror and darkness of the mind Not by the sun's rays, nor the bright shafts of day, Must be dispersed, as is most necessary, But by the face of nature and her laws.' Lucretius' poem On the Nature of the Universe combines a scientific and philosophical treatise with some of the greatest poetry ever written. With intense moral fervour Lucretius demonstrates to humanity that in death there is nothing to fear since the soul is mortal, and the world and everything in it is governed not by the gods, but by the mechanical laws of nature. By believing this, men can live in peace of mind and happiness. Lucretius bases his argument on the atomic theory expounded by the Greek philosopher Epicurus. His poem explores sensation, sex, cosmology, meteorology, and geology through acute observation of the beauties of the natural world and with moving sympathy for man's place in it. Sir Ronald Melville's accessible and accurate verse translation is complemented by an introduction and notes situating Lucretius' scientific theories within the thought of 1st century BCE Rome and discussing the Epicurean philosophy that was his inspiration and why the issues Lucretius' poem raisies about the scientific and poetical views of the world continue to be important. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
Lucretius on Death and Anxiety
Author: Charles Segal
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2014-07-14
Total Pages: 292
ISBN-13: 1400861292
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn a fresh interpretation of Lucretius's On the Nature of Things, Charles Segal reveals this great poetical account of Epicurean philosophy as an important and profound document for the history of Western attitudes toward death. He shows that this poem, aimed at promoting spiritual tranquillity, confronts two anxieties about death not addressed in Epicurus's abstract treatment--the fear of the process of dying and the fear of nothingness. Lucretius, Segal argues, deals more specifically with the body in dying because he draws on the Roman concern with corporeality as well as on the rich traditions of epic and tragic poetry on mortality. Segal explains how Lucretius's sensitivity to the vulnerability of the body's boundaries connects the deaths of individuals with the deaths of worlds, thereby placing human death into the poem's larger context of creative and destructive energies in the universe. The controversial ending of the poem, which describes the plague at Athens, is thus the natural culmination of a theme developed over the course of the work. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
The Way Things Are
Author: Lucretius
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2013-03-01
Total Pages: 527
ISBN-13: 1625581556
DOWNLOAD EBOOKDe rerum natura (The Way Things Are) is a 1st century BC didactic poem by the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius with the goal of explaining Epicurean philosophy to a Roman audience. Lucretius presents the principles of atomism; the nature of the mind and soul; explanations of sensation and thought; the development of the world and its phenomena; and explains a variety of celestial and terrestrial phenomena. The universe described in the poem operates according to these physical principles, guided by fortuna, "chance," and not the divine intervention of the traditional Roman deities.
