Giants or Science:

Stoneman, Richard

doi:10.2307/j.ctv15tt78p.16

Cited by 9 publications

References 2 publications

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The Scientific Sublime in Imperial Rome

Glauthier

2024

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This book charts the role of the sublime in first-century debates about how and why we investigate the natural world. The sublimity of the study of nature—in other words, the scientific sublime—is an animating force in Manilius, Seneca’s Natural Questions, Lucan, the Aetna, and, in the book’s epilogue, the Elder Pliny. These authors work with, and sometimes against, multiple traditions of ancient philosophy and ancient science, including early Greek natural philosophy, Stoic and Epicurean physics and meteorology, and mathematical astronomy and astrology. Despite this shared intellectual background, each author inflects the scientific sublime differently, and even though they do not explicitly theorize the sublime, they repeatedly juxtapose competing modes of sublimity and push readers to think about their relative merits and social functions. As the nature of Roman imperium and public life evolve, the scientific sublime figures the experience of infinite and unending empire, functions as an antidote to the corrupting influences of the seamy present, collapses under the weight of its own pretensions, and makes way for the appreciation of wonders that we cannot comprehend, the spectacle of nature. From this perspective, the scientific sublime constitutes a medium of philosophical communication and debate that fuels a vital current of Latin literary production. This book, then, tells a new story about the study of nature at Rome, locates the sublimity of that study at the center of early imperial Latin literature, and thereby renders the classical sublime more expansive, dynamic, and contested.

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The Scientific Sublime in Imperial Rome

Glauthier

2024

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Glauthier

2024

The Scientific Sublime in Imperial Rome

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Introduction

Glauthier

2024

The Scientific Sublime in Imperial Rome

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The sublime is an experience of transcendence, often described as wonder, awe, stupefaction, ecstasy, or even terror. The scientific sublime is the experience of sublimity through or in connection with the investigation of the natural world. Most studies of the sublime in Greek and/or Latin literature read individual passages through the lens of one or more theorists of the sublime, especially Longinus, Burke, and Kant. For scholars of Latin literature, Lucretius now functions as a de facto theorist, and De rerum natura has become an important touchstone for the field. This book, however, decenters all such theorists. While De rerum natura is an essential model and intertext for Manilius, Seneca, Lucan, and the Aetna poet, this study demonstrates that the histories of the sublime and the investigation of nature at Rome include dimensions and narratives that are unrelated to or not primarily dependent on Lucretius’s poem.

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Giants or Science:

Cited by 9 publications

References 2 publications

The Scientific Sublime in Imperial Rome

The Scientific Sublime in Imperial Rome

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