"Lucretius in the European Enlightenment," School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh, September 3–4, 2009.

The aim of this conference is to explore the impact of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura on the intellectual and cultural history of Enlightenment Europe. Since its fifteenth-century rediscovery Lucretius’ work has never lacked for readers, critics and imitators. It is a text that has aroused unusual passions both positive and negative because of its philosophical content and the uncompromising voice in which that content is delivered. Virtually every major figure in the European Enlightenment was in some way influenced by Lucretius, and examining the reactions to Lucretius in the eighteenth century is essential to understanding the central intellectual concerns of the Enlightenment more generally, ranging from materialism and the influence of the passions on human affairs to the origins of organised religion. And yet, surprisingly little work has been done on the reception of Lucretius in the eighteenth century and the precise role his work played in the key intellectual debates of that period. Although recent important studies on the Enlight enment have given considerable attention to eighteenth-century Epicureanism, they have conceived of it as an abstract set of philosophical ideas, rather than the product of an ongo ing reception of Lucretius’ text and a complex dialogue among Lucretius’ readers. By focusing on various specific engagements with the text of De rerum natura in certain intellectual and literary contexts we shall not only provide a new and robust foundation for the study of Epicureanism in the Enlightenment, but also establish a new model for understanding the role the reception of ancient philosophy and literature played in European thought more generally.

Visit the conference homepage here: http://www.shca.ed.ac.uk/conferences/lucretius09/index.html.

Cfp: "Lucretius: Poetry, Philosophy, and Science," Department of Classics and Ancient History, University of Manchester, July 6-7, 2009.

The De Rerum Natura is at once one of the most brilliant and powerful poems in the Latin language, a passionate attempt at dispelling humanity's fear of death and its enslavement by empty religio, and a detailed exposition of Epicurean atomist physics. There is perhaps no other Latin poem which so requires and rewards approaches which combine the critical perspectives of literary analysis, philosophy and the history of science. At DRN 1.928-34 Lucretius himself links his pursuit of poetic excellence and achievement directly with the subject-matter of his poem and its consequent dissolution of the bonds of religio, and closely associates the clarity of his verses with the grace of the Muses. The recent Cambridge Companion to Lucretius edited by Stuart Gillespie and Philip Hardie represents a landmark in bringing together cross-disciplinary approaches to the DRN. This conference aims to build on this important combination of different scholarly methodologies, but also to focus attention more directly on the poem itself and its multifaceted nature, particularly with regard to the interaction between its poetic form and its scientific and ethical content, and its focus on physics. This is also an ideal opportunity to re-evaluate whether existing approaches (across a range of disciplines) are sufficient for understanding as difficult and important a text as the DRN, and which new questions it might be most productive to ask about the poem. Hence we are seeking to bring together a group of experts from a wide range of relevant disciplines to examine such topics as:

• the relationship between the DRN's status as intrinsically 're-readable' poetry and the character of the didactic content the reader is urged to accept (thus obviating the need for the poem itself?),
• the ways in which its poetic form affects the presentation of the philosophical and scientific content of the DRN,
• the relationship between physics and ethics in the poem: what reasons motivate the concentration on physics, and how does the content of the poem imply or suggest particular changes in belief or behaviour?
• the tensions in the poem between the philosophical position being urged and the affective impact of some passages of the poem (e.g. that 'death is nothing to us' and the manipulation of the emotions of the reader in the depiction of the death of Iphianassa, 1.84ff.),
• its generic self-positioning with regard to earlier Greek didactic poetry (e.g. Hesiod, Aratus),
• its relationship to the philosophical poetry of pre-Socratic philosophers such as Empedocles,
• its key role in the dissemination and transformation of Epicureanism at Rome,
• its place in the wider translation of Hellenistic philosophy into Latin, and its attendant problems,
• its place in contemporary Republican culture, its influence on later poets and philosophers,
• its place in the history of ancient science,
• its influence on early modern science, especially where the DRN itself (or an interpretation of it) seems to affect later theoretical conceptions/formulations.

Visit the conference page here: http://www.arts.manchester.ac.uk/subjectareas/classicsancienthistory/eventsnews/lucretius/.

Gowers, Emily. "Thoroughly Modern Lucretius." TLS October 1, 2008.

• Lucretius. On the Nature of Things. Trans. A. E. Stallings. Intro. Richard Jenkyns. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2008.
• Gillespie, Stuart, and Philip Hardie, eds. Cambridge Companion to Lucretius. Cambridge: CUP, 2008.

On the wall of a house at Pompeii are scratched the words “suabe mari magno . . .” (“It is sweet on the great sea . . .”). These are the first words of the second book of Lucretius’ Epicurean poem De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things), and the sentence ends, “. . . to watch from the shore other people drowning”. The house in question overlooks the Bay of Naples, whose villas and libraries offered Lucretius’ contemporaries a comfortable daily view of the hazards of seafaring and where Epicureanism, the Greek panacea that blended soul-soothing with materialist physics, enjoyed a brief resurgence in the first century bc. Lucretius was no early promoter of Schadenfreude. His serene spectator enjoyed a higher kind of pleasure: remoteness from his own suffering. Though Lucretius revived many of Epicurus’ life-saving mantras – steer clear of stress, channel your desires safely, don’t be afraid of death, the gods are not vindictive – this evangelist probably never aspired to convert his fellow Romans en masse. His was a philosophy of detachment in every sense, espoused by drop-outs, aesthetes, atheists, scientists and Democritean observers through the ages: rational scepticism combined with physical aloofness. (Thomas Gray’s “Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife” is a Lucretian adaptation.) . . .

Read the rest here: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article4861564.ece.