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Morale Boost For Modernity: Stephen Greenblatt's Lucretius., Charles Kay Smith
Morale Boost For Modernity: Stephen Greenblatt's Lucretius., Charles Kay Smith
Charles Kay Smith
In his book, The Swerve, on the re-discovery of Lucretius at the very end of the Middle Ages, Stephen Greenblatt wants us to believe that Lucretius’s epic poem De Rerum Natura initiated the Renaissance and ultimately made the world modern. I agree with very little of his broad brush history, but to win our assent, he creates a fable of a dark medieval world being enlightened by the genius of a Roman poet far ahead of his own time. Greenblatt wants to re-circulate Lucretius’s Epicurean philosophy to a wide modern audience hoping it will enable a widespread epicurean happiness i. …
French Philosophy And English Politics In Interregnum Poetry, Charles Kay Smith
French Philosophy And English Politics In Interregnum Poetry, Charles Kay Smith
Charles Kay Smith
This essay offers a historical context for the influence of epicurean philosophy in mid-seventeenth century so that the ideological nature of poetry during the Interregnum becomes more clear. I begin by discussing the epicurean tradition in France from Michel Montaigne to Pierre Gassendi that had been maturing for half a century. This late Renaissance secular tradition, sometimes referred to as a new humanism, has too often been misinterpreted as the consequence of neo-stoicism rather than neo-epicureanism. Prominent French libertins (epicurean free-thinkers) greeted the defeated cavalier=s after their decisive defeat at the battle of Marston Moor in the summer of 1644. …
Toward A Participatory Rhetoric: Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal, Charles Kay Smith
Toward A Participatory Rhetoric: Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal, Charles Kay Smith
Charles Kay Smith
This essay is a literary analysis of the special form of satire Swift invented for A Modest Proposal. Some of Swift's more conventional classical figures of speech have already been noted, though more or less in isolation to one another as well as to larger designs and aesthetic aims. Swift's genius in A Modest Proposal is to create a speaker whose monologue keeps two distinct styles operational at all times. The style of which the speaker is aware is constantly opposed by covert and innovative verbal and grammatical techniques which the proposer sets in motion but of which he remains …