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 discorso filosofico nell’età dei Presocratici: The Construction of Philosophical Discourse in the Age… Read more
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. It inquires into Plato’s methods of writing and it addresses modern methods of… Read more
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 did has long been a serious question, becoming even more insistent in the modern era. Read more
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 (which we have already glimpsed in Szlezák’s subordination of Plato’s written texts to a historical… Read more
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 teleological impulse directs readers to seek single-minded and persuasive arguments in works that are, nonetheless,… Read more
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 because the book is not a heuristic inquiry but a depiction of one. We still… Read more
Preface [In this on-line version, the page-numbers of the printed version are indicated within braces (“{” and “}”). For example, “{69|70}” indicates where p. 69 of the printed version ends and p. 70 begins. These indications will be useful to readers who need to look up references made elsewhere to the printed version of this book.] This book is the first in a planned series of… Read more
Abbreviations of Most Frequently Cited Works ARV 2 = J. Beazley, Attic Red – Figure Vase-Painters, 2nd ed. (Oxford 1963) EM = Enzyklopädie des Märchens (Berlin and New York 1977–2014) FGrHist = F. Jacoby, Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (1923–) GGL = L. Schmid, Geschichte der griechischen Literatur, vol. 1.1 (Munich 1929) GP 2 = J. D. Denniston, Greek Particles, 2nd ed. (Oxford 1954) LfgrE… Read more
Chapter 1. Oedipodeia Title ἡ Οἰδιποδ(ε)ία (Tabula Borgiana [T: see page 133 for text] and Σ Euripides Phoenician Women [F1: see page 133 for text]), meaning “the poem about Oedipus” (for the variation in spelling and [perhaps] the principle see Stesichorus’ Εὐρωπ(ε)ία fragment 96 with Davies and Finglass ad loc.); or τὰ Οἰδιπόδια (scil. ἔπη) by analogy with the Cypria and Naupactica as Pausanias (F2: see… Read more
Chapter 2. Thebais If it were possible to choose a lost work of Greek literature for recovery, the epic Thebais would come high on a preference list. It would answer more questions about Homer than all the deciphering of Mycenaean tablets and excavating of tholos tombs. Willcock 1964:144 = 440 Dass es der Dichter der Thebais war, d. h. der… Read more
