In a series of masterful essays, Lucretius and Modernity offers an astutely philological and multidisciplinary assessment of the pertinence of De rerum natura, both how the work anticipates a variety of conceptions of modernity and how modern readings activate striking latencies contained in this singular Latin poem. Much more than a straightforward account of reception history, this exemplary collection radically ... Read morepresses the limits of reading the past in the present and the present in the past. - John T. Hamilton, William R. Kenan Professor of German and Comparative Literature, Harvard University, USA The return of Lucretius has been one of the more remarkable developments in the humanities over recent years. This scintillating collection offers diverse and focussed challenges to rethink how responses to Lucretius have shaped, and continue to shape, our sense of the Western intellectual tradition. - Duncan F. Kennedy, author of Rethinking Reality: Lucretius and the Textualization of Nature Lucretius, writing in the first century before the Common Era, is one of our greatest philosophical contemporaries. He teaches us how to think the atom, the swerve and accident, and freedom: this book, taking stock of the poem's reception across disciplines and periods, persuades us with great force of Lucretius's continuing modernity. - Barbara Cassin, Director of Research, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France Show Less