La Relève moderne du sublime lucrétien

Abstract

Lucretius’ 1^st century B.C. poem De rerum natura was immensely influential in the genesis of the notion of the sublime in 18^th centuryEurope. This influence tends to be eclipsed by that of Longinus and his essay “On the Sublime”, translated by Boileau in 1674. This paper suggests that Longinus himself drew upon Lucretius, before examining the manner in which Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant used Lucretius in order to elaborate their own theories of the sublime.