L’utopia lucreziana nell’Autre monde di Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac

Abstract

The article addresses a question that scholars have been asking for a long time about Cyrano de Bergerac’s “sci-fi” novels, namely whether the critical category of utopia is pertinent. Beyond the phantasmagorical inventions both in narrative situations and in language, an affirmative answer may be given if the deep meaning of the novels is brought back to the constantly underlying Lucretian model (both direct and mediated by Gassendi’s teaching). Such philosophical model operates not only with regards to physics and gnoseology, as it is already ascertained, but also to ethics and politics. Understanding the novels, and the rest of Cyrano’s production, through the Lucretian lens also allows us to define his criticism of political institutions within more precise boundaries.