Stefania Cecere

• B1: ars et natura: Pliny’s micronarratives reflecting on art in the context of the Naturalis Historia

The Naturalis Historia (Natural History) is the most comprehensive surviving Latin specialist text of antiquity. Its author, Pliny the Elder (23–79 AD), strove to capture the entire natural history knowledge of his era in this work. The project is dedicated to the relationship between ars and natura as it is revealed in the poetological and art-reflexive passages of the Naturalis Historia. In the numerous anecdotes embedded in the natural history text, art is negotiated in relation to nature and described in terms of its mimetic and moral qualities.

The focus of the study is on books 33–37, in which Pliny inserted a particularly large number of art-related exempla and poetological anecdotes in the context of the depiction of metals, stones, etc. So far, these have usually been studied in isolation and primarily with regard to their significance for the historiography of art, but they will now be analyzed using the methodological approach of the praxeological model of a 'different' aesthetics. The starting point is a 'dense reading' of the work, which is rarely annotated and has not yet been satisfactorily translated. The work recognizes the micronarratives as figures of reflection and analyses them with regard to their aesthetic and literary-theoretical significance and the conception of ars as part of Pliny's natura that they convey.

• Lateinische Fachtexte
• Plinius der Ältere
• Naturalis Historia