In a fresh interpretation of Lucretius's On the Nature of Things,
Charles Segal reveals this great poetical account of Epicurean
philosophy as an important and profound document for the history of
Western attitudes toward death. He shows that this poem, aimed at
promoting spiritual tranquillity, confronts two anxieties about
death not addressed in Epicurus's abstract treatment--the fear of
the process of dying and the fear of nothingness. Lucretius, Segal
argues, deals more specifically with the body in dying because he
draws on the Roman concern with corporeality as well as on the rich
traditions of epic and tragic poetry on mortality. Segal explains
how Lucretius's sensitivity to the vulnerability of the body's
boundaries connects the deaths of individuals with the deaths of
worlds, thereby placing human death into the poem's larger context
of creative and destructive energies in the universe. The
controversial ending of the poem, which describes the plague at
Athens, is thus the natural culmination of a theme developed over
the course of the work. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton
Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again
make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished
backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the
original texts of these important books while presenting them in
durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton
Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly
heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton
University Press since its founding in 1905.
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