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

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-vii

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2. Introduction: Great Vibrations

   • Laura Linker

   Pages 1-12

3. Competing Motions

   • Laura Linker

   Pages 13-26

4. Outrageous Motions

   • Laura Linker

   Pages 27-43

5. Hysterical Motions

   • Laura Linker

   Pages 44-58

6. Contrary Motions

   • Laura Linker

   Pages 59-72

7. Conclusion: The Spirits of the Soul

   • Laura Linker

   Pages 73-76

8. Back Matter

   Pages 77-86

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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).

• England
• event
• nature
• philosophy
• seventeenth century
• writing

“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)

"Lucretian Thought in Late Stuart England makes an original and perceptive contribution to a growing body of research on the treatment of the soul in the literature of the late seventeenth- and early-eighteenth centuries. Linker convincingly demonstrates that the Restoration literary imagination was significantly affected by Epicurean thought, as mediated by contemporary editions of Lucretius's De rerum natura and the neo-Epicurean works of the physician and natural philosopher Walter Charleton, among others. Given the dearth of books on this subject, it was a pleasure to read Linker's study on the soul in Restoration literature written by both women and men who chronicled or staged its stirrings." - Holly Faith Nelson, Professor and Chair of English, Trinity Western University, Canada

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

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