ipl-logo

The Swerve Poggio's Poem 'On The Nature Of Thing'

929 Words4 Pages

In life we sometimes follow, patterns or ways to live that have be left by individuals before us, why? Because we are taught that by our peers. We are made to believe that is the right way or sometimes the only way. But when questioning the patterns or the ideology put in place for us to follow even generations after it was established. We sometimes get looked down on or said to be blaspheming. In the book The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt, we learn in detail why De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things) is a poem that became such a threat to the catholic theology. This poem was written by the late great Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius in an attempt to breakdown the epicurean philosophy. A brief breakdown of this is by the meaning of epicurean …show more content…

All which came into great help as the monasteries would let him in. Poggio also posed a rather expertise in classic Roman writing. This would help him identify which set of books had value to them. Also his possession of great transcription skills allowed him to copy the books, instead of him taking the books with him. As we read in the book The Swerve Poggio's journey for Lucretius whom not much is known of other then the poem he wrote De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things). We read that for one Poggio is in a race against time for since majority of the books of the ancient time haves disappeared. Not because they weren't many copies around. Keeping in mind that at one point it was very common to copy and collect books, but now that has gone away. Another factor is that the Christian leaders were so against heathen, and heathen books. It also did not help the cause by that then the Muslim rule came about they also hated the heathen believe so they destroyed libraries on purpose. Once finding De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things) the author summarizes it. The author mentions a lot of interpretations of the poem but the ones that stood out to me were on page 188 as he mentions "everything comes into being as a result

Open Document