lucretius swerve
Bruno Bosteels; (New York: Continuum, 2009): Cf.
Perhaps it helped that my professor was a thin man, with a sprawling beard, and intense green eyes, who would shriek the lines of the poem like a Puritan preacher. There was an error retrieving your Wish Lists. However beautifully told--and it is--I think the main thrust of Greenblatt's history, that the discovery in 1417 of Lucretius's long lost poem On the Nature of Things changed the course of history might be a little overstated.
It w… My own country has a constant political tug of war between the people. Reality is a mess of conflicting details, and history surges forward like a wave breaking where, at any one time, there are only slightly more elements going forward than are going up and down or even backwards. ), Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician, "clinamen site:http://www.college-de-pataphysique.fr - Google Search", List of English translations of De rerum natura, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Clinamen&oldid=952919545, Short description with empty Wikidata description, Articles with unsourced statements from February 2018, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 24 April 2020, at 19:18.
[17] The simmering of the free will problem may be found in the Socratic tenet that no man does wrong spontaneously, in Plato’s Laws, in the distinction between voluntary and involuntary actions in the third book of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, in Gorgias’ Helena, in Andokides’ On his return, and elsewhere.
It isn't good scholarship. When the author does get around to discussing the actual philosophy and "science" of Lucretius, he actually resorts to a bullet point summary.
This well-written, well-documented book makes for a fascinating read assuming one has interest in the topic. While the atoms are being carried down in a straight line through the void by their own weight, at quite uncertain times and at uncertain intervals they swerve slightly out of their course — just enough for one to be able to say that there has been an alteration in their movement. The recovery of the ancient text is seen as its rebirth, i.e. In other words, we reduce a complex history to cartoon sketches: noble Rome; ignorant Middle Ages; religious Renaissance; until science gave us atomic theory and a way to live that doesn't require a God, people were pious, ignorant, and unquestioning. Even after reading the book and having it explained to me, I still find it off-putting. I have no idea how to judge if On The Nature Of Things is really as crucial as Greenblatt thinks, but it's a damn good story, regardless. The man’s name is Poggio Basciolini and he is unusual for his time: driven by curiosity, when curiosity is not considered a virtue but a vice, fascinated with the ideas of ancient and pagan Greece and Rome, a dangerous hobby in Poggio’s time, heretical even. There is one other point on this subject which I want you to understand. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. It implies that one is inclined or biased towards introducing a plausible but unprovable clinamen when a specific mechanism cannot be found to refute a credible argument against one's hypothesis or theory. Its return to circulation changed the course of history. From these copies Lucretius found his way into print. Eventually, but unsurprisingly, the great medieval monasteries that preserved classical texts by patient copying of manuscripts came to neglect him. Lucretius’s poem, I'm very ambivalent about this book. And good stories are very useful. In other words, we reduce a complex history to cartoon sketches: noble Rome; ignorant Middle Ages; religious Renaissance; until science gave us atomic theory and a way to live that doesn't require a God, people were pious, ignorant, and unquestioning. by W. W. Norton Company. This event is vividly described by the renaissance scholar Stephen Greenblatt in The Swerve. 1283)", Why Stephen Greenblatt is wrong and why it matters, https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/stephen-greenblatts-the-swerve-reviewed-by-michael-dirda/2011/09/20/gIQA8WmVmK_story.html, "Stephen Greenblatt's The Swerve racked up prizes — and completely misled you about the Middle Ages", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Swerve&oldid=983233962, National Book Award for Nonfiction winning works, Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction-winning works, Articles needing more viewpoints from February 2016, Articles with unsourced statements from August 2020, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 13 October 2020, at 01:43. This is a book about the philosophical epic poem. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading. Disappointed with the book's simplistic and clichéd conclusions, he nonetheless saw Greenblatt's "excellent notes and bibliography" as a reliable reference for those seeking a more in-depth and serious treatment. (I was pleased that she mentions Greenblatt, in passing, about halfway through. Maybe worth reading? Only a small portion is devoted to Lucretius himself (some of it unavoidably speculative because we have little concrete evidence of his life), and Greenblatt gives almost a bullet point summary of the poem (okay, a slight exaggeration). On the one hand, it was an intriguing glimpse into the 15th-century searches for classical manuscripts via the discovery of Lucretius' poem, This is an interesting book, primarily about the poem. This shopping feature will continue to load items when the Enter key is pressed.
The story follows... One of the world's most celebrated scholars, Stephen Greenblatt has crafted both an innovative work of history and a thrilling story of discovery, in which one manuscript, plucked from a thousand years of neglect, changed the course of human thought and made possible the world as we know it.
The war of beliefs that rages today is not new, but is merely a continuation of fear versus reason, and belief versus logic. The violence we see between ourselves stem from the same ignorance and hatred, fear and exercise of domination.
Sure, a few college French courses helped drive home the point that it literally means "rebirth," and I kind of knew that old books were involved, but I didn't think much about the logistics. True--it's a tale of passion and sacrifice, but also of fanaticism and philosophical determination. I won't get into the ideas beyond what he calls "how the world became modern," but I will say that a lot more history and even philosophy is on display. In the Los Angeles Review of Books Jim Hinch saw within the book "two books... one deserving of an award, the other not". If you have a mild interest in medieval or Renaissance history you may find this book interesting. [20] Greenblatt responded to this critique by reiterating his view of the importance of the Renaissance in history. First, the title and subtitle suggest that the rediscovery of the manuscript of Lucretius'. I would have much preferred a historical fiction account of the main character as he searched for old manuscripts (which I found interesting) with some historical facts sprinkled in. Engaging introduction to Epicureanism and the recovery of the Greek and Roman literary tradition, Reviewed in the United States on October 31, 2015. My one issue is that despite teasing out the influence that Lucretius had on Botticelli’s most famous surviving painting Primavera (“Spring”) (he is likely to have destroyed the twin painting Estate (“Summer”) during the dark days of Savonarola’s reign of terror in Florence), G, Interesting book about the history of Roman poet Lucretius’ text On The Nature of Things and its rediscovery by Poggio the Florentine in the 1400s. Distant views: The imagery of Lucretius 2. Life is one result of this swerve, as atoms assemble themselves into forms that enable us to see and breathe. How is it possible that Greenblatt makes ancient and medieval history enjoyable? Greenblatt's story of the unleashing of the pleasure principle on the European world after the discovery of Lucretius conveys his own passion for discovery, and displays his brilliance as a storyteller. This isn't good storytelling. Learn more about the program. I don't think it would have ocurred to me to get it otherwise as it sounded rather too challenging and recondite for me. ( Log Out / And yet!
Niccoli kept the manuscript for 12 years, and then finally allowed further copies to be produced. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission.
Amazing part of the story of the battle of ideas, Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 24, 2017, Very well written, interesting and entertaining account of how a single powerful and counter-cultural idea changed the world, twice. In Difference and Repetition, Gilles Deleuze employs the term in his description of "multiplicities". ( Log Out / Aquinas and Dante, who play little part in Greenblatt's description of medieval Christianity, found room for both love and pleasure in their philosophies.
Refresh and try again. In that case, nature would never have produced anything.[1]. Others who were disappointed by this book can express the reasons far better than I could. He says that matter is in the “habit” [ solerent] of swerving, meaning that it happens more than once. That this mediocre book won a Pulitzer Prize substantially diminishes for me the significance of Pulitzer Prizes. The most complete statement of Epicureanism that has survived is a poem, ON THE NATURE OF THINGS, written by the Roman poet Lucretius. In the winter of 1417, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late thirties plucked a very old manuscript off a dusty shelf in a remote monastery, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied. He follows "the swerve" of Lucretius's atoms briefly into the works of Shakespeare and Montaigne. I give it 2 stars because I am soft and love the classical world and those individuals throughout history who have derived inspiration from the class. He follows "the swerve" of Lucretius's atoms briefly into the works of Shakespeare and Montaigne. Your recently viewed items and featured recommendations, Select the department you want to search in, + No Import Fees Deposit & $6.48 Shipping to Czech Republic. This, he says, is the only way to avoid the problem of assuming that something comes from nothing—the swerve of matter in the rain. Greenblatt's book is altogether accessible and will deepen and broaden one's knowledge of the topics it addresses. Lucretius was a passionate follower of the Greek philosopher Epicurus. Change ), You are commenting using your Google account. THE SWERVE is Stephen Greenblatt's account of how ON THE NATURE OF THINGS was rescued from obscurity by Poggio Bracciolini, a Vatican bureaucrat wi.
It begins with a crisis in the Catholic church and in the career of Poggio Bracciolini, who was personal secretary to John XXIII. In an abbey in Germany he came across a manuscript of a long-lost classical poem, Lucretius's. Then, the author switches gears to that novel-by-a-poet style to keep my attention. Virgil, Ovid and Aristotle were more or less continuously read from antiquity until the age of print. Top subscription boxes – right to your door, Extended holiday return window till Jan 31, 2021, © 1996-2020, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. The war of beliefs that rages today is not new, but is merely a continuation of fear versus reason, and belief versus logic.
Abstract: In his version of atomism, Lucretius made explicit reference to the concept of an intrinsic declination of the atom, the atomic swerve (clinamen in Latin), stressing that the time and space of the infinitesimal atomic vibration is uncertain. Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free. In many cases humanists found more reliable manuscripts, and they sometimes discovered whole texts. In modern English it has come more generally to mean an inclination or a bias.
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