The Path to which Wild Error Leads: A Lucretian Comedy of Errors

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Abstract

Disrupting the free fall in the laminar flow, the Epicurean atomic swerve of the clinamen introduces chance to the steady descent, allowing the errancy of individual inclination while initiating the birth of structural form.

Disrupting the causal progress of his comic design, Shakespeare’s narrative swerve introduces the accidental into a teleological plot, allowing the errancy of individual will while promoting new energetic narrative structure.

Offering a Lucretian reading of Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors, I consider how the playwright’s complex association of identity, chance, and genre can be informed by philosophical atomism, approached along the trajectory of a readerly clinamen.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)nk
Number of pages19
JournalTextual Practice
Volumenk
Issue numbernk
Publication statusAccepted/In press - 2012

Keywords

  • Lucretius
  • Shakespeare
  • Comedy of Errors
  • Chance
  • Clinamen
  • Swerve
  • Atoms
  • Serres
  • Bloom

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