Book contents
- Approaches to Lucretius
- Approaches to Lucretius
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Notes on Contributors
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I The Text
- Part II Lucretius and his Readers
- Part III The Word and the World
- Chapter 5 Infinity, Enclosure and False Closure in Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura
- Chapter 6 Lucretian Echoes
- Chapter 7 Saussure’s cahiers and Lucretius’ elementa: A Reconsideration of the Letters–Atoms Analogy
- Part IV Literary and Philosophical Sources
- Part V Worldviews
- Works Cited
- Index Locorum
- Index Rerum
Chapter 6 - Lucretian Echoes
Sound as Metaphor for Literary Allusion in De Rerum Natura 4.549–94
from Part III - The Word and the World
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 June 2020
- Approaches to Lucretius
- Approaches to Lucretius
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Notes on Contributors
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I The Text
- Part II Lucretius and his Readers
- Part III The Word and the World
- Chapter 5 Infinity, Enclosure and False Closure in Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura
- Chapter 6 Lucretian Echoes
- Chapter 7 Saussure’s cahiers and Lucretius’ elementa: A Reconsideration of the Letters–Atoms Analogy
- Part IV Literary and Philosophical Sources
- Part V Worldviews
- Works Cited
- Index Locorum
- Index Rerum
Summary
This chapter takes a metapoetic approach to Lucretian allusion to show that the DRN figures the phenomenon of echo as a metaphor for literary appropriation. Lucretius culminates his discussion of acoustic phenomena and hearing with the example of the echo (DRN 4.549–94). Insofar as echo is introduced as the most prominent effect in the perceptible world of the atomic reverberations that give rise to auditory aisthēsis, I argue that Lucretius' multiple allusions to earlier poetry in this passage also serve to illustrate metapoetically the process itself of hearing. The ideas inherent in this Lucretian passage find parallels in the fragmentary papyri of Philodemus.
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- Approaches to LucretiusTraditions and Innovations in Reading the <I>De Rerum Natura</I>, pp. 124 - 139Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020