Search Results

I suspect that some of you have read Stephen Greenblatt's book, "The Swerve: How the World Became Modern." I read it years ago, although it failed to get me interested in Epucureanism. (It was reading the "Letter to Menoeceus" that did the trick). Ada Palmer, a University of Chicago historian and also a science fiction novelist, has a book that covers some of the same territory, "Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance." I am attending a science fiction convention in Pittsburgh, ConFluence, the wee…

Joshua, I'm pretty sure Ada Palmer told me that as she worked on her own book, she and Greenblatt looked at each other's books.

I just finished reading Ada Palmer’s book, “Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance.” I figured there might be some interest if I posted about it. The preface and the first chapter discuss Epicureanism, Lucretius’ poem and how many of the poem’s concepts challenge Christian thinking. The first sentence of the preface is, “If you were told that reading this book could send you to Hell, would you keep reading?” Palmer argues that there were essentially two “waves” of how Lucretius was read, from 1417…