Lucretius And Shakespeare On The Nature Of Things

Download or read book Lucretius and Shakespeare on the Nature of Things written by Richard Allen Shoaf and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2014-10-16 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lucretius and Shakespeare on the Nature of Things maps large, new vistas for understanding the relationship between De rerum natura and Shakespeare’s works. In chapters on six important plays across the canon (King Lear, Macbeth, Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice, The Tempest, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream), it demonstrates that Shakespeare articulates his erotics of being, his “great creating nature” (The Winter’s Tale), by drawing on imagery he learned from Ovid and other classical poets, but especially from Lucretius, in his powerful epic that celebrates Venus and her endless creativity. Responding to Lucretius’s widely admired Latinity in his exposition of the life of man in nature, Shakespeare emerges as an early modern materialist who writes poetry that is effectively “atomic,” marked (as we might say today) by fission (hendiadys, for example) and fusion (synoeciosis, for example), joining and splitting, splitting and joining language and character as no other poet has ever done – To give away yourself keeps yourself still; My grave is like to be my wedding bed; I begin/To doubt the equivocation of the fiend/That lies like truth. Readers of Shoaf’s book will encounter anew, through both fresh evidence and close reading, Shakespeare’s universally acknowledged commitment to the art of nature and the nature of art. With Lucretius’s poetry as inspiration, Shakespeare becomes the poet of the material, both in art and in nature, immensely creative with his dædala lingua like dædala natura – his wonder-crafting tongue like wonder-working nature.

Download or read book The Swerve written by Stephen Greenblatt and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the world's most celebrated scholars, 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.

Download or read book The Atomic Theory of Lucretius written by Fleeming Jenkin and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2020-12-08 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Atomic Theory of Lucretius" is a scientific essay written by Fleeming Jenkin which deals with principles of atomic theory covering the theory of matter and a postulate by Lucretius. Atomic theory is the scientific theory that matter is composed of particles called atoms. Atomic theory traces its origins to an ancient philosophical tradition known as atomism, elaborated by Roman philosopher Lucretius. According to this idea, if one were to take a lump of matter and cut it into ever smaller pieces, one would eventually reach a point where the pieces could not be further cut into anything smaller.

Download or read book Three Philosophical Poets written by George Santayana and published by Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University. This book was released on 1910 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Faith and Wisdom in Science written by Tom McLeish and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-05-29 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Can you Count the Clouds?" asks the voice of God from the whirlwind in the stunningly beautiful catalogue of nature-questions from the Old Testament Book of Job. Tom McLeish takes a scientist's reading of this ancient text as a centrepiece to make the case for science as a deeply human and ancient activity, embedded in some of the oldest stories told about human desire to understand the natural world. Drawing on stories from the modern science of chaos and uncertainty alongside medieval, patristic, classical and Biblical sources, Faith and Wisdom in Science challenges much of the current 'science and religion' debate as operating with the wrong assumptions and in the wrong space. Its narrative approach develops a natural critique of the cultural separation of sciences and humanities, suggesting an approach to science, or in its more ancient form natural philosophy - the 'love of wisdom of natural things' - that can draw on theological and cultural roots. Following the theme of pain in human confrontation with nature, it develops a 'Theology of Science', recognising that both scientific and theological worldviews must be 'of' each other, not holding separate domains. Science finds its place within an old story of participative reconciliation with a nature, of which we start ignorant and fearful, but learn to perceive and work with in wisdom. Surprisingly, science becomes a deeply religious activity. There are urgent lessons for education, the political process of decision-making on science and technology, our relationship with the global environment, and the way that both religious and secular communities alike celebrate and govern science.

Download or read book Rape of Lucrece written by William Shakespeare and published by . This book was released on 1900 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Science of Shakespeare written by Dan Falk and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2014-04-22 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William Shakespeare lived at a remarkable time—a period we now recognize as the first phase of the Scientific Revolution. New ideas were transforming Western thought, the medieval was giving way to the modern, and the work of a few key figures hinted at the brave new world to come: the methodical and rational Galileo, the skeptical Montaigne, and—as Falk convincingly argues—Shakespeare, who observed human nature just as intently as the astronomers who studied the night sky. In The Science of Shakespeare, we meet a colorful cast of Renaissance thinkers, including Thomas Digges, who published the first English account of the "new astronomy" and lived in the same neighborhood as Shakespeare; Thomas Harriot—"England's Galileo"—who aimed a telescope at the night sky months ahead of his Italian counterpart; and Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, whose observatory-castle stood within sight of Elsinore, chosen by Shakespeare as the setting for Hamlet—and whose family crest happened to include the names "Rosencrans" and "Guildensteren." And then there's Galileo himself: As Falk shows, his telescopic observations may have influenced one of Shakespeare's final works. Dan Falk's The Science of Shakespeare explores the connections between the famous playwright and the beginnings of the Scientific Revolution—and how, together, they changed the world forever.