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The Art of Reading Earthquakes: On Harvey's Wit, Ramus's Method, and the Renaissance of Lucretius*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Gerard Passannante
Gerard Passannante*
Affiliation:
University of Maryland, College Park
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Abstract

Gabriel Harvey's witty use of a quotation from Ovid on the occasion of the earthquake of 1580 is the point of departure for exploring the several ways in which a contemporary debate about literature, logic, and natural causes was carried out through the mediation of classical texts. At the explosive intersection of Harvey's Socratic wit and Ramist logic, a buried reference to Lucretius sets into motion a number of deeper questions about the nature of literary and natural digressions, and about the ironic ends of a method that demands order, both for its ancient texts and for the natural world.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 61 , Issue 3 , Fall 2008 , pp. 792 - 832
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2008

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank the following people for allowing me to do that most suspect of things — explain a joke — and for their invaluable advice: Leonard Barkan, Elizabeth Bearden, Kim Coles, Robert Goulding, Anthony Grafton, Marshall Grossman, Peter Mack, Eileen Reeves, Jay Rubenstein, Nigel Smith, Brian Stock, Jessica Wolfe, Wesley Yu, the anonymous readers at Renaissance Quarterly, and my friends and colleagues at the American Academy in Rome, where I spent a fellowship year in 2006–07. I would also like to thank the librarians of the Folger Shakespeare Library, Princeton Rare Books, and the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana for their generous support.

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