☰

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Criticism & Theory

Preface to Plato

Preface to Plato
- Used Book in Good Condition
Plato's frontal attack on poetry has always been a problem for sympathetic students, who have often minimized or avoided it. Beginning with the premise that the attack must be taken seriously, Mr. Havelock shows that Plato's hostility is explained by the continued domination of the poetic tradition in contemporary Greek thought.

The reason for the dominance of this tradition was technological. In a nonliterate culture, stored experience necessary to cultural stability had to be preserved as poetry in order to be memorized. Plato attacks poets, particularly Homer, as the sole source of Greek moral and technical instruction--Mr. Havelock shows how the Illiad acted as an oral encyclopedia. Under the label of mimesis, Plato condemns the poetic process of emotional identification and the necessity of presenting content as a series of specific images in a continued narrative.

The second part of the book discusses the Platonic Forms as an aspect of an increasingly rational culture. Literate Greece demanded, instead of poetic discourse, a vocabulary and a sentence structure both abstract and explicit in which experience could be described normatively and analytically: in short a language of ethics and science.
Country USA
Brand Belknap Press
Manufacturer Belknap Press
Binding Paperback
ReleaseDate 2006-06-10
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780674699069

You might also like...

The Muse Learns to Write: Reflections on Orality and Literacy from Antiquity to the Present

The Muse Learns to Write: Reflections on Orality and Literacy from Antiquity to the Present

Before and After Socrates

Before and After Socrates

The Twilight of the Idols and the Anti-Christ: or How to Philosophize with a Hammer (Penguin Classics)

The Twilight of the Idols and the Anti-Christ: or How to Philosophize with a Hammer (Penguin Classics)

Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence

Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence

The Promise of Poststructuralist Sociology: Marginalized Peoples and the Problem of Knowledge

The Promise of Poststructuralist Sociology: Marginalized Peoples and the Problem of Knowledge

Orality and Literacy: 30th Anniversary Edition (New Accents)

Orality and Literacy: 30th Anniversary Edition (New Accents)

The Internet of Us: Knowing More and Understanding Less in the Age of Big Data

The Internet of Us: Knowing More and Understanding Less in the Age of Big Data

Philosophy Before Socrates: An Introduction with Texts and Commentary

Philosophy Before Socrates: An Introduction with Texts and Commentary

Descartes: Meditations on First Philosophy: With Selections from the Objections and Replies (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy)

Descartes: Meditations on First Philosophy: With Selections from the Objections and Replies (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy)