M.A. (Latin) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

This thesis argues that in the De Rerum Natura of Lucretius Shelley found an insight into the role of contingency in physical and historical process which allowed him to go beyond the limitations of an intellectual inheritance divided between post-Kantian Romanticism and the sceptical revolutionary Enlightenment. This insight entails radical implications for our understanding of the political role of the literary text. Shelley conceives society in evolutionary terms, making poetry a revolutionary clinamen (or mutation) in the iterative cycles of social reproduction. Models drawn from contemporary chaos theory help us to understand how this entropic tendency to disorder can work simultaneously as a negentropic motor of social innovation. Building on the work of Michel Serres, who demonstrates that Lucretius anticipates the recent scientific interest in "determinate indeterminacy," this thesis shows that Shelley's understanding of historical process and the role of the poet in social reproduction has anticipated some of the implications of contemporary "chaos science" in ways that suggest models for the general application of this new paradigm of contemporary scientific thought to literary and political issues.

The Influence of Lucretius' De Rertun Natura and of its English translations by Thomas Creech and John Dryden on Alexander Pope's Essay on Man has not previously been adequately explored. As this thesis demonstrates, comparative analysis shows (1) that the Lucretiun poem is a model for Pope's manner of addressing the audience, for the pose of his speaker, and for his satiric and didactic style; (2) that the English translations of Creech and Dryden are sources of many verbal echoes and allusions and of a few rhymes; (3) that De Rerum Natura is the source of several controlling metaphors for the Essay on Man; (4) that similarities exist between the Lucretiun concept of order arising from disorder and Pope's concept of "discordia concors" and between the recognition of the cycle as the outer aspect of Nature in both poems; (5) that one of Pope's purposes is to refute the Epicurean religious beliefs professed by Lucretius; and (6) that a remarkable similarity exists between the ethical beliefs of Lucretius and those of Pope. The evidence suggests that De Reruzn Natura, and its translations by Creech and Dryden, should be considered major influences on Pope's An Essay on Man.

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