The Early Modern Lucretius, 16-17 May: booking now open
February 7, 2012
Piero di Cosimo, The Forest Fire: with kind permission of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
Piero di Cosimo’s The Forest Fire explores the early history of humanity in the spirit of Lucretius’ De rerum natura (see Catherine Whistler and David Bomford, The Forest Fire by Piero di Cosimo). Recent scholarship has been bringing to light the substantial and neglected presence of Lucretius in early modern culture, and this year’s CEMS conference (May 16-17) takes as its theme The Early Modern Lucretius. Speakers will include Stephen Greenblatt, whose The Swerve: How the Renaissance Began vividly narrates the poem’s rediscovery, Alison Brown, author of The Return of Lucretius to Renaissance Florence, Philip Hardie, author of Lucretian Receptions, David Norbrook, co-editor of a new edition of Lucy Hutchinson’s translation, and Catherine Wilson, author of Epicureanism at the Origins of Modernity. There will be a special session in which manuscript and print editions of Lucretius from the Bodleian Library will be presented by David Butterfield, who is preparing a new edition of the poem. Fuller details and booking are here.
