Apian Imagery and the Critique of Poetic Sweetness in Plato's Republic

Liebert, Rana Saadi

doi:10.1353/apa.0.0042

Cited by 10 publications

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References 17 publications

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“…For the links between poets, bees, sweetness, and honey, see e.g. Waszink (1974), Liebert (2010), and Bartsch (2015), 133–41.…”

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Lucretius’ Didactics of Disgust

McCarter¹

2022

Ramus

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The plague that closes Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura is a spectacle of disgust. Throats sweat with blood (6.47f.); tongues drip with gore (6.1149); breath reeks like rotten cadavers (6.1154f.); drinking water is contaminated when the sick dive into it (6.1174f.); black discharge pours from stomachs (6.1200); foul blood seeps from noses (6.1203); the sick slice off their own hands, feet, and genitals (6.1209f.); dead bodies are entombed by ulcers (6.1271). Again and again Lucretius hits upon domains that have been identified as key disgust elicitors. In Book 6, more than in any other book of the epic, we encounter what is taeter, ‘disgusting’. This adjective appears nine times in the final book (22, 217, 787, 807, 976, 1154, 1200, 1205, and 1266) after showing up one time each in Books 1 (936), 3 (581), and 5 (1126); six times in Book 2 (400, 415, 476, 510, 705, 872); and five times in Book 4 (11, 124, 172, 685, 1176). The vast majority of these instances describe disgust working upon our senses of taste, smell, sight, and even hearing (OLD s.v. 1); that is, ‘primary’ or ‘core’ disgust. At 2.510f., for instance, Lucretius speaks of a substance that is taetrius… / naribus auribus atque oculis orisque sapori (‘more disgusting to noses, ears, eyes, and the taste of the mouth’). But the word can also carry an ethical or moral nuance (OLD s.v. 2), suggesting ‘secondary’ disgust. At 5.1126, for example, the word describes Tartarus, into which thunderbolts ‘scornfully’ hurl sinners (contemptim in Tartara taetra). Here, Lucretius wants his reader to feel a sense of moral aversion to the idea of the Underworld, which throughout the epic he is at pains to prove is nothing but a poetic fiction.

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“…For the links between poets, bees, sweetness, and honey, see e.g. Waszink (1974), Liebert (2010), and Bartsch (2015), 133–41.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On Epicurus' 'Garden' seeClay (2009). For the links between poets, bees, sweetness, and honey, see e.g Waszink (1974),Liebert (2010),. andBartsch (2015), 133-41.LUCRETIUS' DIDACTICS OF DISGUST…”

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confidence: 99%

Lucretius’ Didactics of Disgust

McCarter¹

2022

Ramus

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Tragic Pleasure from Homer to Plato

Liebert

2017

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This book offers a resolution of the paradox posed by the pleasure of tragedy by returning to its earliest articulations in archaic Greek poetry and its subsequent emergence as a philosophical problem in Plato's Republic. Socrates' claim that tragic poetry satisfies our 'hunger for tears' hearkens back to archaic conceptions of both poetry and mourning that suggest a common source of pleasure in the human appetite for heightened forms of emotional distress. By unearthing a psychosomatic model of aesthetic engagement implicit in archaic poetry and philosophically elaborated by Plato, this volume not only sheds new light on the Republic's notorious indictment of poetry, but also identifies rationally and ethically disinterested sources of value in our pursuit of aesthetic states. In doing so the book resolves an intractable paradox in aesthetic theory and human psychology: the appeal of painful emotions.

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2018

Soziale Insekten in Der Antike

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Apian Imagery and the Critique of Poetic Sweetness in Plato's Republic

Cited by 10 publications

References 17 publications

Lucretius’ Didactics of Disgust

Lucretius’ Didactics of Disgust

Tragic Pleasure from Homer to Plato

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