4. From Beginning to End and Back Again When reading an expository work of heuristic inquiry and argumentation, we can take it as a given that the work itself relies on an underlying framework of methodical progress toward an endpoint, a destination. This assumption does not apply to the Republic, however, mainly […]
3. Literary Practice, Modality, and Distance The previous two chapters discussed hermeneutic problems and rarely touched on solutions. Positive goals conventionally associated with literary-rhetorical methods of reading were mentioned, but they remain to be explained more fully in the context of interpreting Plato’s dialogues. As I will continue to argue, a powerful […]
2. Philosophical Rhetoric In a reexamination of the methodological limitations just introduced, this chapter poses a fundamental opposition between expository and literary paradigms of interpretation. I will begin by distinguishing several methods of interpretation by discipline and by their attitudes toward history, on the grounds that historical inquiry’s methodological focus on information […]
1. The Problem of Literary Form We rarely ask why Sophocles composed tragedies; Dickens, novels; or Dickinson, poems. These writers were presumably driven to these genres by psychological and cultural forces about which it would seem idle to speculate. When it comes to Plato, however, why he chose to write as he […]
Preface Dedicated to the memory of Dorrit Cohn “You have degraded what should have been a course of lectures into a series of tales.” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches” This little book reconsiders literary form in Plato from a methodological perspective. […]
Bibliography Acosta-Hughes, B., and S. A. Stephens. 2012. Callimachus in Context: From Plato to the Augustan Poets. Cambridge. Adkins, A. W. H. 1980. Review of Havelock 1978. Classical Philology 75:256–268. Adomenas, M. 2006. “Plato, Presocratics and the Question of Intellectual Genre.” In La costruzione del […]
Appendix. Plato’s Self-Disclosures A Discussion of Gaiser’s Interpretation The present Appendix is designed to integrate my discussion of Plato’s self-referential statements and their references to Gaiser’s work, which my general Introduction builds upon. It is also intended as a tribute to what I regard as a milestone in Platonic studies. […]
Conclusion In the Introduction, I searched Plato’s corpus for what I called his “self-disclosures”: Plato consistently, albeit implicitly, refers to his dialogues as a form of mousikê, as opposed to other forms of discourse. The book’s four chapters focus on the Phaedrus with such a purpose in mind, and from a number […]
Chapter 4. The Muses and the Tree Having returned to Athens, Plato lived in the Academy, which is a gymnasium outside the walls, in a grove named after a certain hero, Hecademus, as is stated by Eupolis in his play entitled Shirkers “In the shady walks of the divine Hecademus.” […]
Chapter 3. Calliope and Ourania … and to Calliope, the eldest, and to Ourania who comes after her (τῇ μετ᾿ αὐτῇ), the cicadas report those who spend their time in philosophy and honor the music that belongs to them—who most of the all the Muses have as their sphere the […]