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Gerard Passannante - The Lucretian Renaissance - 9780226648491 - V9780226648491
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The Lucretian Renaissance

€ 79.18
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Description for The Lucretian Renaissance Hardcover. Begins by taking up the ancient philosophical notion that the world is composed of two fundamental opposites: atoms, as the philosopher Epicurus theorized, intrinsically unchangeable and moving about the void; and, the void itself, or nothingness. Num Pages: 256 pages. BIC Classification: HPCB. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 216 x 140 x 23. Weight in Grams: 399.
With "The Lucretian Renaissance", Gerard Passannante offers a radical rethinking of a familiar narrative: the rise of materialism in early modern Europe. Passannante begins by taking up the ancient philosophical notion that the world is composed of two fundamental opposites: atoms, as the philosopher Epicurus theorized, intrinsically unchangeable and moving about the void; and, the void itself, or nothingness. Passannante considers the fact that this strain of ancient Greek philosophy survived and was transmitted to the Renaissance primarily by means of a poem that had seemingly been lost - a poem insisting that the letters of the alphabet are like the atoms that make up the universe. By tracing this elemental analogy through the fortunes of Lucretius' "On the Nature of Things", Passannante argues that the philosophy of atoms and the void reemerged in the Renaissance as a story about reading and letters - a story that materialized in texts, in their physical recomposition, and in their scattering. From the works of Virgil and Macrobius to those of Petrarch, Montaigne, Bacon, Spenser, and Newton, "The Lucretian Renaissance" recovers a forgotten history of materialism in humanist thought and scholarly practice and asks us to reconsider one of the most enduring questions of the period: what does it mean for a text, a poem, and philosophy to be "reborn"?

Product Details

Format
Hardback
Publication date
2011
Publisher
The University of Chicago Press United States
Number of pages
256
Condition
New
Number of Pages
264
Place of Publication
, United States
ISBN
9780226648491
SKU
V9780226648491
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 7 to 11 working days
Ref
99-1

About Gerard Passannante
Gerard Passannante is assistant professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Maryland.

Reviews for The Lucretian Renaissance
"An excellent and beautifully written book, The Lucretian Renaissance narrates fiendishly tricky, obscure, and complex matter normally accessible only to the erudite - philologists, Renaissance scholars, and historians of the book - with the lightness of touch of a storyteller." (James I. Porter, University of California, Irvine)"

Goodreads reviews for The Lucretian Renaissance


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