The Language of Atoms studies Lucretius great poem, De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things) in light of an understanding of language as performative, providing psychic therapy or creating new verbal meanings, rather than passively describing the nature of the universe. To this end, Shearin discusses promising, acts of naming, and the larger political implications of these linguistic acts. At the center of De rerum natura is a persistent juxtaposition of humans and atoms that carries implications for both the creative potential of language and its deceptive powers.
“In his rigorous exploration of the performative dimension of the De rerum natura, Shearin takes the study of the language of Lucretius to a new level of critical sophistication, and offers a fresh and compelling understanding of the poem's claims to a practical, therapeutic function.”
— Duncan Kennedy, University of Bristol
Wilson Shearin received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. As a Fulbright scholar, he studied in the Philosophy Department at the Université de Fribourg in Switzerland and was a faculty fellow for the University of Miami’s Center for the Humanities. His intellectual interests lie largely at the intersection of philosophy and literature – both philosophical and theoretical approaches to literature and literary approaches to philosophical texts. He is the co-editor of Dynamic Reading: Studies in the Reception of Epicureanism (2012).
