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Since its coinage in the nineteenth century, the concept of Carolingian renaissance has been primarily based on the revival of classical texts promoted by Charlemagne and his successors. Among the positive consequences of Carolingian classicism is the careful—if discreet—preservation of the text of Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura, which survives in three valuable ninth-century manuscripts. Whereas rigorous philological studies of these manuscripts have been offered, little attention has been paid to their role in, and connection with, the reception of Lucretius in ninth-century literature. It has been generally assumed that for the Carolingians the DRN was essentially a source for grammatical and metrical usage, and extensive efforts have been made to distinguish between direct and indirect quotations of Lucretian lines. In the present paper, I shall adopt a different approach, starting from the observation that the diffusion of DRN in ninth-century Europe coincided with an increasing interest in its content. I shall argue that a deeper understanding of Lucretius’s Carolingian reception can be achieved if one overcomes the dichotomies usually maintained by the philological Quellenforschung, as such dichotomies tend to overshadow the historically and culturally specific features of the early medieval practice of imitatio. By endorsing the perspective of intertextual studies, reception theory, and rhetorical criticism, I shall point out a so far unrecognized imitatio Lucretii in the astronomical work (Liber de Astronomia) of the Irishman Dicuil, whose allusions to Lucretius—particularly to the cosmological treatment of Book 5, the so-called “apology” of Book 1 (921-50 = 4.1-25), and the calf argument of Book 2 (352-66)—are representative of the peculiarities of Carolingian reading culture.

A brief sketch of the reception of Epicureanism in early modern natural philosophy and metaphysics (15th-18th centuries)

In the 16th and 17th centuries, when Aristotelianism still was the leading current of natural philosophy and atomistic theories began to arise, Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura stood out as an attractive and dangerous model. The present paper reassesses several relevant aspects of Lucretius’ materialistic psychology by focusing on the problem of the soul’s repartition through the limbs discussed in Book 3. A very successful Lucretian image serves as fil rouge throughout this survey: the description of a snake chopped up, with its pieces moving on the ground (Lucretius DRN 1969, 3.657–669). The paper’s first section sets the poet’s theory against the background of ancient psychology, pointing out its often neglected assimilation of Aristotelian elements. The second section highlights the influence of De Rerum Natura and its physiology of the soul on Bernardino Telesio, Agostino Doni and Francis Bacon, since all of these authors engage in an original recombination of mechanical and teleological explanations.

Lucretius has often been regarded as one of the fathers of modern science, and also in recent years several studies have explored his influence far beyond a merely literary perspective. In this paper I analyse specifically the importance of the poet's 'eclectic' attitude in physiology from the point of view of his 'Fortleben' in early modern thought. I suggest that the typical eclectic combination of physics and biology, atomism and macroscopy, which the 'De rerum natura' shows in its didactic structure both through its images and even more through its conscious scientific reflection, built an attractive basis for attempts in the modern period at harmonising corpuscularian theories and qualitative doctrines. In order to appreciate such a dialectic relatioship I open with a discussion of Lucretius' own versatile use of vitalism and biology - referring especially to the Peripatetic tradition - and then go on to consider the influence of such a powerful model, which for the sake of argument is called 'bifocal' and 'integrative', on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century authors like Fracastoro, Telesio and Bruno.