La douceur dans les Épîtres d'Horace: un art de vivre entre poésie et philosophie

Abstract

In this study, we wish to bring to light various expressions of the notion of mildness in Horace's Epistles. Not only is mildness to be found in the poet's self-representation and in his depiction of his own environment, the domain of Sabine, but mildness is also part of the poet's parenetic strategy that aims at teaching a pleasant art of life. We wish to demonstrate that the significance of mildness in Horace's Epistles, both in terms of content and writing, is directly inherited and adapted from Epicurean philosophical conceptions and from Lucretius's poetics. From this perspective, we shall argue that poetry and philosophy cannot be dissociated in Horace's work.