Lucretius on Disease: The Poetics of Morbidity in ›De rerum natura‹

George Kazantzidis

Published by De Gruyter 2021

Lucretius on Disease

The Poetics of Morbidity in ›De rerum natura‹

George Kazantzidis

Volume 117 in the series Trends in Classics - Supplementary Volumes

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110722765

Overview
Contents

About this book

The standard view in scholarship is that disease in Lucretius' De rerum natura is mainly a problem to be solved and then dispensed with.

However, a closer reading suggests that things are more layered and complex than they appear at first sight: just as morbus causes a radical rearrangement of atoms in the body and makes the patient engage with alternative and up to that point unknown dimensions of the sensible world, so does disease as a theme generate a multiplicity of meanings in the text. The present book argues for a reconsideration of morbus in De rerum natura along those lines: it invites the reader to revisit the topic of disease and reflect on the various, and often contrasting, discourses that unfold around it. More specifically, it illustrates how, apart from calling for therapy, disease, due to its dominant presence in the narrative, transforms at the same time into a concept that is integral both to the poem’s philosophical agenda but also to its wider aesthetic concerns as a literary product.

The book thus sheds new light on De rerum natura's intense preoccupation with morbus by showing how disease is not exclusively conceived by Lucretius as a blind, obliterating force but is crucially linked to life and meaning—both inside and outside the text.

Author / Editor information

George Kazantzidis, University of Patras, Patras, Greece.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	I
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	V
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	VII
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1 Disease and the (Un)Making of the World Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	11
2 Disease, Closure and the Sense of an Ending Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	37
3 Disease and the Marvellous. Epilepsy in Book 3 and 6 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	76
4 From Callimachean Aesthetics to the Sublime. The Plague in Book 6 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	122
5 Afterword Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	173
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	175
Index Rerum et Nominum Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	197
Index Locorum Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	203

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter
Audience: Classicists (especially Latinists), Historians of philosophy and science
Pages
- Front matter: 7
- Main content: 211
Keywords: Lucretius; De rerum natura; disease

eBook

Published: April 19, 2021
ISBN: 9783110722765

Hardcover

Published: April 19, 2021
ISBN: 9783110722659

Paperback

Published: December 19, 2022
ISBN: 9783111116648