Lucretian Thought in Late Stuart England: Debates about the Nature of the Soul

How did writers understand the soul in late seventeenth-century England? This book considers depictions of the soul in literary texts that engage with Lucretius's Epicurean philosophy in De rerum natura or through the writings of the most important natural philosopher to disseminate Epicurean atomism in England, Walter Charleton (1619-1707).

Linker's book is intended to be a precisely focused study, somewhere in between a long scholarly article and an academic monograph (her entire text comes to a succinct eighty-two pages). Overall, this work succeeds within these modest confines: it is a concise, lucid, and insightful account of an unduly neglected topic in early modern literary studies. (Jacqueline Broad, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, Vol. 29 (3), 2017)

Autorentext
Laura Linker is Assistant Professor of English at High Point University, USA.

Inhalt
Introduction: Great Vibrations 1. Competing Motions 2. Outrageous Motions 3. Hysterical Motions 4. Contrary Motions Conclusion: The Spirits of the Soul