The Empedoclean renaissance

Drew Daniel

pp. 277-300

in: Paul Cefalu, Gary Kuchar, Bryan Reynolds (eds), The return of theory in early modern English studies II, Berlin, Springer, 2014

Abstract

Early modern studies has recently witnessed a striking resurgence of interest in Lucretius as a crucial figure for the dissemination of Epicurean atomism into the cultural bloodstream. Alison Brown, Catherine Wilson, Jonathan Goldberg, Stephen Greenblatt, and Gerard Passannante have all contributed distinctive book-length studies that track this process and theorize Lucretian after effects, echoes and resonances in the theology, history, painting, and poetry of the period.² If there was ever a candidate for a "return of theory within early modernity," then the return of the theory of atoms and void from medieval desuetude into the shocked, tantalized awareness of a particularly crucial galaxy of early modern readers from Machiavelli to Montaigne to Spenser offers a case in point of the uncannily necromantic return of dead ideas to virulent, conta- gious new life.

Cited authors

De Montaigne Michel

Brown Alison

Empedocles