Between Nature and Spirit: Lucretian Resonances in Paulinus’ Carmen 23
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Yingxue Wang
Abstract
This paper contributes to the reassessment of the role of Lucretius’ De rerum natura and Epicurean philosophy in early Christian writings by conducting a close study of Carmen 23 composed by the poet Paulinus of Nola. While previous scholarship has examined classical influences on Paulinus’ poetry, especially from Vergil, no existing study has attended to Paulinus’ incorporation of Epicurean elements. This paper argues that in Carmen 23 Paulinus incorporates Epicurean doctrines and Lucretius’ poetic imagery to appeal to an audience familiar with Epicurean ideas. Through the creative fusion of Epicurean physics with Christian metaphysics, Paulinus conjures up a poetic world in which the natural and spiritual realms constantly interact. While using Lucretian imagery to direct his audience’s gaze toward the natural world, Paulinus nevertheless reveals a higher reality in which the invisible operation of God’s spirit governs and perfects the mechanism of nature. In thus stretching his poetic imagination to encompass the working of nature and spirit, Paulinus invents a new eclectic literary form and a kind of physiological miracle account that blends naturalism and mysticism. As such, Carmen 23 attests to Paulinus’ literary achievement in repurposing a classic of Epicurean philosophy and Latin poetry for Christian panegyric and hagiography.
© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Titelseiten
- Introduction
- Intertextuality as a Phenomenon in the History of Religion and Culture
- Impulses
- Talmudic-Christian Intertextuality: Primary Considerations
- Intertextuality Now and Then: From Kristeva Back to Irenaeus and the Valentinians
- Intertextualität und spätantike Hagiographie: Methodische Überlegungen und exemplarische Vertiefungen
- Articles
- Auf den Spuren des hellenistischen Judentums in Caesarea: Ein Jüdischer Psalmenforscher in Origenes’ Glosse im Kontext Rabbinischer Literatur
- Beyond the Rhetoric of the Octavius: Minucius Felix’s Exhortatio ad Christianitatem
- Plato’s Phaedrus and Symposium in the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies
- Basil’s Use of Oppian in Homilia in hexaemeron 7: His Source of Zoological Knowledge Reconsidered
- Between Nature and Spirit: Lucretian Resonances in Paulinus’ Carmen 23
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Titelseiten
- Introduction
- Intertextuality as a Phenomenon in the History of Religion and Culture
- Impulses
- Talmudic-Christian Intertextuality: Primary Considerations
- Intertextuality Now and Then: From Kristeva Back to Irenaeus and the Valentinians
- Intertextualität und spätantike Hagiographie: Methodische Überlegungen und exemplarische Vertiefungen
- Articles
- Auf den Spuren des hellenistischen Judentums in Caesarea: Ein Jüdischer Psalmenforscher in Origenes’ Glosse im Kontext Rabbinischer Literatur
- Beyond the Rhetoric of the Octavius: Minucius Felix’s Exhortatio ad Christianitatem
- Plato’s Phaedrus and Symposium in the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies
- Basil’s Use of Oppian in Homilia in hexaemeron 7: His Source of Zoological Knowledge Reconsidered
- Between Nature and Spirit: Lucretian Resonances in Paulinus’ Carmen 23
