Cfp: "Lucretius: Poetry, Philosophy, and Science," Department of Classics and Ancient History, University of Manchester, July 6-7, 2009.

The De Rerum Natura is at once one of the most brilliant and powerful poems in the Latin language, a passionate attempt at dispelling humanity's fear of death and its enslavement by empty religio, and a detailed exposition of Epicurean atomist physics. There is perhaps no other Latin poem which so requires and rewards approaches which combine the critical perspectives of literary analysis, philosophy and the history of science. At DRN 1.928-34 Lucretius himself links his pursuit of poetic excellence and achievement directly with the subject-matter of his poem and its consequent dissolution of the bonds of religio, and closely associates the clarity of his verses with the grace of the Muses. The recent Cambridge Companion to Lucretius edited by Stuart Gillespie and Philip Hardie represents a landmark in bringing together cross-disciplinary approaches to the DRN. This conference aims to build on this important combination of different scholarly methodologies, but also to focus attention more directly on the poem itself and its multifaceted nature, particularly with regard to the interaction between its poetic form and its scientific and ethical content, and its focus on physics. This is also an ideal opportunity to re-evaluate whether existing approaches (across a range of disciplines) are sufficient for understanding as difficult and important a text as the DRN, and which new questions it might be most productive to ask about the poem. Hence we are seeking to bring together a group of experts from a wide range of relevant disciplines to examine such topics as:

• the relationship between the DRN's status as intrinsically 're-readable' poetry and the character of the didactic content the reader is urged to accept (thus obviating the need for the poem itself?),
• the ways in which its poetic form affects the presentation of the philosophical and scientific content of the DRN,
• the relationship between physics and ethics in the poem: what reasons motivate the concentration on physics, and how does the content of the poem imply or suggest particular changes in belief or behaviour?
• the tensions in the poem between the philosophical position being urged and the affective impact of some passages of the poem (e.g. that 'death is nothing to us' and the manipulation of the emotions of the reader in the depiction of the death of Iphianassa, 1.84ff.),
• its generic self-positioning with regard to earlier Greek didactic poetry (e.g. Hesiod, Aratus),
• its relationship to the philosophical poetry of pre-Socratic philosophers such as Empedocles,
• its key role in the dissemination and transformation of Epicureanism at Rome,
• its place in the wider translation of Hellenistic philosophy into Latin, and its attendant problems,
• its place in contemporary Republican culture, its influence on later poets and philosophers,
• its place in the history of ancient science,
• its influence on early modern science, especially where the DRN itself (or an interpretation of it) seems to affect later theoretical conceptions/formulations.

Visit the conference page here: http://www.arts.manchester.ac.uk/subjectareas/classicsancienthistory/eventsnews/lucretius/.