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<i>Lucretian Receptions: History, The Sublime, Knowledge</i> (review)

2011; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 104; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/clw.2011.0081

1558-9234

D. Mark Possanza,

Philosophy, History, and Historiography

Reviewed by: Lucretian Receptions: History, The Sublime, Knowledge D. Mark Possanza Philip Hardie . Lucretian Receptions: History, The Sublime, Knowledge. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pp. ix, 306. $90.00. ISBN 978-0-521-76041-6. Hardie's book presents a series of detailed studies in which he reconstructs the ongoing textual dialogue that takes place between Lucretius' de rerum natura and the works of the great Augustans, Vergil (Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid), Horace (Odes, Epistles, and Ars Poetica), and Ovid (Metamorphoses 15); the concluding chapter extends the influence of Lucretius' aurea dicta to Milton's Paradise Lost. The intense engagement of the three Augustan poets with the Lucretian discourse on the nature of the universe provided them, according to Hardie's analysis, with forms of thought and expression which could serve as models for the treatment of themes and subjects, for the construction of literary genealogies, and for their own conceptualizations of their roles as poets confronting the realities of their historical situation. To adapt Quintilian's famous comparison of Homer and Oceanus, just as Lucretius says that genitalia corpora are the essential building blocks of creation, so Lucretius' poem is an inexhaustible source of generative material for the creative impulses of Vergil, Horace, and Ovid. This study puts Lucretius at the center of poetic production in Augustan Age. The book is divided into three large sections according to theme: part 1: Time, History, Culture; part 2: Sublime Visions; part 3: Certainties and Uncertainties; these themes articulate the major categories of analysis. Each of these three thematic sections is subdivided into chapters, eight in all, which focus on the individual authors and works that illustrate the particular theme under consideration. (Chapters 1-2, 4, 6-8 are revised versions of previous publications.) In chapter 1, for example, Hardie discusses, in connection with the theme "Time, History, Culture," the presence of Lucretius in the Eclogues through Vergil's use of his predecessor's histories of the cosmos and of civilization. Through imitation of Lucretius' treatment of these topics, Vergil enlarges the bucolic world into a space that can accommodate reflection on cosmogony (the song of Silenus in Eclogue 6, which is introduced by an authoritative Lucretian syllabus) or on an important historical moment (the bringing of otia by the godlike iuuenis in Eclogue 1, who is assimilated to Epicurus through allusion to Lucretius' praise of the philosopher as a godlike culture hero). The longest and most challenging of the thematic sections deals with the sublime, that literary representation of awe-inspiring and unnerving phenomena. In chapter 3 Hardie traces the lineage of Vergil's sublime monster in Aeneid 4, Fama, to Lucretius' Religio in book 1 of the de rerum natura and to Ennius' Discordia in the Annales, with connections to Empedocles' Strife. In this analysis, Fama ultimately becomes a figure for the epic poet himself, feet on the ground, head in the clouds, reading and absorbing the words of his predecessors to create a new and compelling narrative for an audience that is all ears. This is a sophisticated book for sophisticated readers. It assumes a high level of familiarity with a broad range of texts in Latin and Greek (these are translated in the main body of the text) and with the critical concepts employed. In addition, the interpretive agility with which Hardie moves and [End Page 515] makes connections among the works under discussion requires a reader who can keep up with the discussion of authors, topics, and works within each chapter and thematic section. The book's primary audience, accordingly, will be scholars and graduate students. For those who are making their first foray into the advanced study of intertextuality, allusion, and reference in Latin poetry, chapter 5, which analyzes the speech of Pythagoras in Ovid's Metamorphoses 15, is the best place to begin, because here the discussion uncovers a well-defined and clearly marked imitation of predecessors, Empedocles, Ennius, Lucretius, and Vergil, in which the Lucretian connections stand out in very high relief to reveal the complex of poetic atoms that make up Pythagoras' discourse. Omnia mutantur, says Pythagoras, and that includes the literary transformation of Lucretius' Graius homo into Ovid's Empedoclean, Ennian, and Lucretian...