A large part of our contributor's article on Lucretius is dedicated to an extended discussion of his poem De rerum natura, which we reproduce below.
The literary background to the poem
In modern times poetry has largely ceased to be a vehicle for explicit philosophical, scientific, or practical instruction, but didactic poetry – poetry that has such instruction as its explicit aim – flourished in antiquity (Gale 1994, Dalzell 1996, Toohey 1996, Volk 2002). The idea of teaching through a poem was a …
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Citation: Seal, Carey. "De rerum natura". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 29 December 2011 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=13409, accessed 24 November 2024.]
