Daniel Marković, The Rhetoric of Explanation in Lucretius' De rerum natura, Leiden, Brill, coll. " Mnemosyne, Supplements" n°294, 2008, xii-180 p.
ISBN : 978 90 04 16796 4
79€
Présentation de l'éditeur:
Alleged incompatibility ofEpicurus' philosophy with rhetoric has led modern scholars to isolaterhetorical procedures in Lucretius' De rerum natura and regard them asnon-Epicurean, accessory features. This study of Lucretius' rhetoricalprocedures is based on a wider understanding of the term rhetoric, notlimited to the genre of oratory. In a fresh discussion of the questionsof provenance and the role of the most important formal procedures ofexposition in De rerum natura the author argues that instead ofinjecting rhetorical strategies from non-Epicurean sources, Lucretiusin fact intensified rhetorical elements already present in the work ofEpicurus. These elements are used for the purpose of explanation, andfunction as cognitive and mnemonic aids for the reader.
Daniel Marković, Ph.D.(2006) in Classical Philology, University of Illinois atUrbana-Champaign, is Lecturer in Classics at Temple University,Philadelphia. He has published on Lucretius and on the rhetoricalfunction of hyperbaton and gnome in Greek poetry.