Lucretius on Death and Anxiety. Poetry and Philosophy in De Rerum Natura. - SEGAL, Ch.,

poetry and philosophy in De rerumnatura

KORTE INHOUD

?The Epicurean arguments against the fear of death deployed by Lucretius are often granted a pellucid force in their own rationalistic terms, but felt to be an inadequate ?consolation mortis? in the face of the emotional reality of the fear of extinction. Segal shows that anxieties about the dissolution of the body and the dissipation of the self into the infinite nothingness of death are in fact obsessively confronted in the ?De rerun natura?, but mostly at levels other than that of the discursive argumentation itself. Pervasive is the old dichotomie between philosophy and poetry, but in the now orthodox version whereby the poet?s powers of empathy and imagistic association are working with rather than against the philosophical message. (?) The chief concept, used chiefly as a heuristic model, is the Freudian notion of displacement (?). The results are very fruitful. (?). The book is most persuasive as an account of Lucretius? imagery rather than of his argumentative and consolatory techniques, and in this i...
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1990Uitgever: Princeton University Press279 paginasISBN-10: 0691068267ISBN-13: 9780691068268

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