Wandering Atoms, Roman Error, and Poetic Tradition in Lucretius

2021 ◽  
pp. 100-155
Author(s):  
Basil Dufallo
Keyword(s):  
Gender Norms ◽  
First Century ◽  
De Rerum Natura ◽  
Poetic Tradition ◽  
Semantic Fields ◽  
Greek Philosopher

Between Terence and Lucretius’s floruit (ca. 50s BCE), the boundaries of Roman power moved far outward again. And it is no coincidence that among the most disorienting images in all of ancient poetry stands Lucretius’s portrayal of Epicurus’s mental journey across the immeasurable universe, a heroic quest from which the Greek philosopher, like a conquering Roman general, brings back knowledge as a preferable form of imperial plunder (De rerum natura [DRN] 1.72–77). Lucretius thus depicts the Greek Epicurus as potentially more appealing—and specifically more masculine—than an audience of first-century BCE Romans might be inclined to regard him, given stereotypes of Epicureans as queerly deviant where Roman gender norms were concerned. The passage also creates a salient contrast between Epicurus and the wandering Odysseus of Homer’s Odyssey. After contextualizing Lucretius’s work through the “becoming lost” theme in fragmentary poetry between him and Terence (Pacuvius, Accius, and Lucilius), Chapter 3 argues that this image of Epicurus is not alone within DRN in the attitude toward Roman expansion that it encourages. There are pervasive aspects of the whole poem that anticipate and reinforce Lucretius’s approach here to both the positive and negative aspects of expansion, as well as the link that Lucretius fashions between them and his own poetic craft. We discern these connections especially by focusing on two interrelated, though opposed, semantic fields denoting wide-ranging, non-systematic movement: error/errare and vagus/vagari. Within DRN, these can designate, respectively, an Odyssean aimlessness in life and an Epicurean existence in harmony with the natural motions of the atoms.

Lucretius and the Language of Nature

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barnaby Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Figurative Language ◽  
Linguistic Theory ◽  
First Century ◽  
De Rerum Natura ◽  
Detailed Understanding ◽  
Technical Language ◽  
Depth Reconstruction ◽  
Linguistic Innovation ◽  
Prefixed Words ◽  
Core Features

Lucretius’ 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. This book is 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 core thesis of the book is that a detailed understanding of Epicurean linguistic theory will bring with it a greater appreciation of Lucretius’ own language. Accordingly, the book features an in-depth reconstruction of certain core features of Epicurean linguistic theory. Elements of Lucretius’ style that are 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.

HOMERIC CONCERNS: A METAPOETIC READING OF LUCRETIUS, DE RERUM NATURA 2.1–19

2013 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 780-784 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sydnor Roy
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Great Pleasure ◽  
De Rerum Natura ◽  
Poetic Tradition ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Programmatic Statement ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Line Spread

Suave, mari magno turbantibus aequora ventise terra magnum alterius spectare laborem;non quia vexari quemquamst iucunda voluptas,sed quibus ipse malis careas quia cernere suave est.suave etiam belli certamina magna tueri 5per campos instructa tua sine parte pericli.sed nil dulcius est, bene quam munita tenereedita doctrina sapientum templa serena,despicere unde queas alios passimque videreerrare atque viam palantis quaerere vitae, 10certare ingenio, contendere nobilitate,noctes atque dies niti praestante laboread summas emergere opes rerumque potiri.o miseras hominum mentes, o pectora caeca!qualibus in tenebris vitae quantisque periclis 15degitur hoc aevi quodcumquest! nonne viderenil aliud sibi naturam latrare, nisi utquicorpore seiunctus dolor absit, mensque fruaturiucundo sensu cura semota metuque?(Lucr. 2.1–19)It is pleasant, when the winds stir up the waters on the great sea,to watch the great struggle of another from land;not because it is a great pleasure that anyone be troubled,but because it is pleasant to observe the troubles you yourself lack.It is also pleasant to watch the great contests of war 5spread out over the plains without taking any part in the danger.But nothing is more pleasing than to hold lofty yet calm templesthat are well defended by the teachings of wise men,from which you can look down and see others everywherego astray and wander while seeking the path of their life, 10competing in wits and contending over their nobility;throughout nights and days they strive with outstanding labourto come out at the peak of riches and have power over everything.O wretched minds of men, O blind hearts!In what shadows of life and in how many dangers 15is this bit of life, whatever it may be, being spent by you! Do you not seethat nature barks for nothing other than this – thatgrief be separated from the body and far away, and that the mind enjoypleasant feelings cut off from anxiety and fear? Epicurus' advice to his young friend Pythocles to ‘flee all education, raising up the top sail’ (παιδείαν δὲ πᾶσαν, μακάριε, ϕεῦγε τἀκάτιον ἀράμενος, Diog.Laert. 10.6 = Epicurus fr. 163 Us.) contains an allusion to Circe's advice to Odysseus in Odyssey 12.37–58. For much of the Greek (and Roman) world, education was based on the Homeric epics, and thus Epicurus' statement represents a complicated position towards Homer in particular and poetry in general. Epicurean philosophy rejects poetry because it is misleading about the gods and the nature of the soul, but Epicurus and his followers, most notably Philodemus and Lucretius, engage in poetic allusion and even the composition of poetry. Much work has been done on allusions to poetry in all three writers, but I hope here to bring out a heretofore unnoticed poetic allusion at the start of De rerum natura Book 2, in which Lucretius makes a programmatic statement about not only his philosophy, but also his poetry and its place in the poetic tradition.

scholarly journals Dapper dudes: an exploration of young men's fashion consumption and conceptions of masculinity

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dylan Martin
Keyword(s):  
Generation Y ◽  
Real World ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Gender Norms ◽  
First Century ◽  
Fashion Industry ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Media Reports ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Depth Interviews

If sensationalized media reports are any indication, the men’s fashion industry has entered into an exciting phase of expansion and evolution. As the market diversifies to become increasingly vibrant and varied, prominent ready-to-wear labels continue to showcase evermore divergent and gender-blurring designs in what is celebrated as an anything-goes period in menswear. To examine whether these clothing trends and industry transitions have lasting real world implications, this research seeks to give voice to fashion-conscious male consumers - the subject of scarce qualitative scholarship. Insights gleaned from 20 in-depth interviews with young Canadian men point to contemporary shifts not only in shopping habits and tastes, but also in hegemonic masculinity. Responding to romantic assertions that there are “no rules” in twenty-first century fashion, findings examine the extent to which long withstanding Western menswear conventions prevail. Through illuminating the lived experiences of sartorially savvy males aged 19 to 29, this study uncovers how Generation Y men navigate gender norms and expectations while crafting an idiosyncratic sense of style. Ultimately, this research enriches existing industry and theoretical understandings of how young men approach fashion.

Afterword and Timeline: On Becoming a Citizen

2020 ◽  
pp. 123-150
Author(s):  
Melanie C. Hawthorne
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Sexual Orientation ◽  
Gender Norms ◽  
First Century ◽  
National Belonging ◽  
Cultural Assumptions ◽  
The Us ◽  
Gay Pride ◽  
Twenty First Century

Throughout the course of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, women's claims to citizenship in their own right have gradually been recognized in Europe and the US, though some exceptions still remain (as charted in a parallel chronology). Yet citizenship remains tied to broad cultural assumptions about gender and enforces gender norms. The resurgence of nationalism in the twenty-first century suggests and the success of "gay pride" movements may have shifted shame away from sexual orientation and onto national belonging, but the question remains whether the underlying structural ideological isomorphism has shifted.

Aenesidemus (1st century BC)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
R.J. Hankinson
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Greek Philosopher ◽  
Pyrrhonian Scepticism

Aenesidemus was a Greek philosopher of the first century bc who revived Pyrrhonian Scepticism, formulating the basic Ten Modes of Scepticism, or tropoi, and demonstrating that concepts such as cause, explanation, goodness and the goal of life engendered endemic and undecidable dispute; faced with this the Sceptic suspends judgment – and tranquillity follows.

Nature

2016 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 19 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Bellamy Foster
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Intrinsic Properties ◽  
De Rerum Natura ◽  
Material World ◽  
Complex Word ◽  
Monthly Review ◽  
The World ◽  
Raymond Williams

This article is adapted from John Bellamy Foster, "Nature," in Kelly Fritsch, Clare O'Connor, and AK Thompson, ed., Keywords for Radicals: The Contested Vocabulary of Late-Capitalist Struggle (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2016), 279-86, http://akpress.org/keywords-for-radicals.html."Nature," wrote Raymond Williams in Keywords, "is perhaps the most complex word in the language." It is derived from the Latin natura, as exemplified by Lucretius's great didactic poem De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things) from the first century BCE. The word "nature" has three primary, interrelated meanings: (1) the intrinsic properties or essence of things or processes; (2) an inherent force that directs or determines the world; and (3) the material world or universe, the object of our sense perceptions—both in its entirety and variously understood as including or excluding God, spirit, mind, human beings, society, history, culture, etc.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

INTERNATIONALISING THE SONNET: TORU DUTT'S “SONNET – BAUGMAREE”

2014 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 595-608 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Chapman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
English Language ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
First Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Poetic Form ◽  
Victorian Poetry ◽  
Poetic Tradition ◽  
History Of ◽  
National Boundaries

“When the history of theliterature of our country comes to be written, there is sure to be a page in it dedicated to this fragile exotic blossom of song” (Dutt xxvii). This sentence is Edmund Gosse's famous final flourish to his memoir of Toru Dutt, which introduced her posthumous volumeAncient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan, published in 1882, five years after her death from tuberculosis at the age of twenty-one. But what would Dutt's page look like in the history of “our country,” by which Gosse means of course England? This question is a tricky one, because placing a late nineteenth-century Bengali who was a Europhile, a Christian convert, and an English-language woman poet within a British Victorian tradition is a simplistic, if not a problematic appropriation of a colonial subject into the centre of the British Empire. Where Dutt belongs has long preoccupied critics who try to recuperate her poetry for an Indian national poetic tradition, or for a transnational, cosmopolitan poetics. The issue of placing Dutt allows us also to press questions about the conception of Victorian poetry studies, its geographical, cultural, and national boundaries, not just in the nineteenth-century creation of a canon but in our current conception of the symbolic map of Victorian poetry. But, while recent critics have celebrated her poetry's embrace of global poetry as a challenge to the parochialism of national literary boundaries, Dutt's original English-language poetry also suggests an uneven, uncomfortable hybridity, and a wry, ironic interplay between distance and proximity that unfolds through her use of poetic form. This essay investigates what it means to “make something” of Toru Dutt, in the nineteenth century and in the twenty-first century, what is at stake for Victorian poetry studies in privileging Dutt and her multi-lingual writing, and whether her celebrated transnationalism might not also include a discomfort with hybridity that reveals itself through the relation between space and literary form in her poetry.

1. Introduction

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Moral Theory ◽  
First Century ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Philosophy Of Nature ◽  
Roman Poet ◽  
De Rerum Natura ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Conduct Of Life ◽  
Considerable Impact ◽  
The Universe

The ‘Introduction’ outlines the philosophy of Epicureanism and its founder, Epicurus (341–270 bce), and considers why it was so divisive and controversial. It explains how Epicureanism embodied a comprehensive set of teachings about nature and its living inhabitants, especially human beings. Epicurean prescriptions for the conduct of life and the attitudes to take towards love, friendship, death, and politics, were presented as following from fundamental truths about the constitution of the universe. The Roman poet Lucretius presented the Epicurean philosophy of nature in his first century bce De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), which had a considerable impact on science, anthropology, and moral theory when printed versions began to circulate in the 15th century.

Pyrrho (c.365–c.275 BC)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacques Brunschwig
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Main Question ◽  
Documentary Evidence ◽  
Patron Saint ◽  
Sextus Empiricus ◽  
Greek Philosopher ◽  
Extensive Documentation ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Suspension Of Judgment ◽  
Pyrrhonian Scepticism

The Greek philosopher Pyrrho of Elis gave his name first to the most influential version of ancient scepticism (Pyrrhonism), and later to scepticism as such (pyrrhonism). Like Socrates, he wrote nothing, despite which – or thanks to which – he too became one of the great figures of philosophy. Although he has vanished behind his own legend, he must have helped nurture that legend: his unique personality palpably exercised an unequalled fascination on his acquaintances, and through them, on many others. We possess, thanks especially to Sextus Empiricus, extensive documentation of what can be called ‘Neo-Pyrrhonian’ scepticism, because from the time of Aenesidemus (first century bc) it invoked Pyrrho as its patron saint. But Pyrrho’s own thought is hard to recover. The documentary evidence for him is mainly anecdotal, and the principal doxography is more or less directly dependent on his leading disciple Timon of Phlius, who managed to present himself as Pyrrho’s mere ‘spokesman’, but who was in fact perhaps rather more than that. The main question, which is still unanswered, is whether Pyrrho was primarily or even solely a moralist, the champion of an ethical outlook based on indifference and insensibility, or whether he had already explicitly set up the weaponry of the sceptical critique of knowledge which underlies the epistemological watchword ‘suspension of judgment’.

Rewriting Gideon

2019 ◽  
pp. 17-36
Author(s):  
Kelly J. Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Gender Norms ◽  
Reception History ◽  
First Century ◽  
Biblical Story ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Jewish Historian ◽  
Book Of Judges

Chapter 1 argues that the Bible we read today reflects periods of rewriting, understood as a kind of reception history, and illustrates how revisions and expansions to earlier texts provide readers with a window onto changing expectations for gendered performance, as inscribed in the biblical story of Gideon. The chapter analyzes the significance of a manuscript found at Qumran, 4QJudga, which lacks the unnamed prophet now in Judg 6:7–10. Additionally, the chapter explores how constructions of gender often define men as the opposite of what is considered “womanly,” citing two examples: first, by examining how the prophet in Judg 6:7–10 connects the story of Deborah to the story of Gideon; and, second, by discussing how the first-century Jewish historian Josephus retells the stories of Deborah, Barak, and Gideon from the book of Judges by rewriting these characters in light of ancient Roman gender norms.

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