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- Title
TRANSLATING IMPIETY: GIROLAMO FRACHETTA AND THE FIRST VERNACULAR COMMENTARY ON LUCRETIUS.
- Authors
COLEMAN, JAMES K.
- Abstract
This essay sheds light on an important but largely overlooked chapter in the story of the early modern reception of Lucretius' De rerum natura: the publication, in 1589, of Girolamo Frachetta's Breve spositione di tutta eloper di Lucretio, the first publication to systematically explicate the philosophical content of Lucretius' poem in a vernacular language. Published more than half a century before the first vernacular translation of the poem, Frachetta's commentary was a groundbreaking effort to make Lucretius' version of Epicurean philosophy accessible not only to the Latin-educated elite, but to a broader vernacular readership -- a potentially dangerous enterprise at a time when professing belief in the more controversial tenets of Epicurean philosophy could provoke investigation for heresy by the Inquisition. This essay shows how Frachetta crafted a commentary capable of effectively explicating Lucretius' philosophy to a vernacular readership, while taking measures to proactively defend himself from possible accusations of heresy and his text from the threat of suppression.
- Subjects
DE Rerum Natura (Poem : Lucretius); LUCRETIUS Carus, Titus, ca. 99 B.C.-55 B.C.; FRACHETTA, Girolamo; EPICUREANS (Greek philosophy); ANCIENT philosophy
- Publication
Quaderni d'italianistica, 2014, Vol 35, Issue 1, p55
- ISSN
0226-8043
- Publication type
Essay