Download or read book Tragic Pleasure from Homer to Plato written by Rana Saadi Liebert and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book offers a resolution of the paradox posed by the pleasure of tragedy by returning to its earliest articulations in archaic Greek poetry and its subsequent emergence as a philosophical problem in Plato's Republic. Socrates' claim that tragic poetry satisfies our 'hunger for tears' hearkens back to archaic conceptions of both poetry and mourning that suggest a common source of pleasure in the human appetite for heightened forms of emotional distress. By unearthing a psychosomatic model of aesthetic engagement implicit in archaic poetry and philosophically elaborated by Plato, this volume not only sheds new light on the Republic's notorious indictment of poetry, but also identifies rationally and ethically disinterested sources of value in our pursuit of aesthetic states. In doing so the book resolves an intractable paradox in aesthetic theory and human psychology: the appeal of painful emotions"--
Download or read book Tragic Pleasure from Homer to Plato written by Rana Saadi Liebert and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-04-07 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a resolution of the paradox posed by the pleasure of tragedy by returning to its earliest articulations in archaic Greek poetry and its subsequent emergence as a philosophical problem in Plato's Republic. Socrates' claim that tragic poetry satisfies our 'hunger for tears' hearkens back to archaic conceptions of both poetry and mourning that suggest a common source of pleasure in the human appetite for heightened forms of emotional distress. By unearthing a psychosomatic model of aesthetic engagement implicit in archaic poetry and philosophically elaborated by Plato, this volume not only sheds new light on the Republic's notorious indictment of poetry, but also identifies rationally and ethically disinterested sources of value in our pursuit of aesthetic states. In doing so the book resolves an intractable paradox in aesthetic theory and human psychology: the appeal of painful emotions.
Download or read book Between Ecstasy and Truth written by Stephen Halliwell and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2011 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As well as producing one of the finest of all poetic traditions, ancient Greek culture produced a major tradition of poetic theory and criticism. Halliwell's volume offers a series of detailed and challenging interpretations of some of the defining authors and texts in the history of ancient Greek poetics: the Homeric epics, Aristophanes' Frogs, Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Poetics, Gorgias's Helen, Isocrates' treatises, Philodemus' On Poems, and Longinus On the Sublime. The volume's fundamental concern is with how the Greeks conceptualized the experience of poetry and debated the values of that experience. The book's organizing theme is a recurrent Greek dialectic between ideas of poetry as, on the one hand, a powerfully enthralling experience in its own right (a kind of 'ecstasy') and, on the other, a medium for the expression of truths which can exercise lasting influence on its audiences' views of the world. Citing a wide range of modern scholarship, and making frequent connections with later periods of literary theory and aesthetics, Halliwell questions many orthodoxies and received opinions about the texts analysed. The resulting perspective casts new light on ways in which the Greeks attempted to make sense of the psychology of poetic experience - including the roles of emotion, ethics, imagination, and knowledge - in the life of their culture.
Download or read book The Poetics of Aristotle written by Aristotle and published by . This book was released on 1920 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Poetics of Aristotle written by Aristotle and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-03-07 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In it, Aristotle offers an account of what he calls "poetry" (a term which in Greek literally means "making" and in this context includes drama - comedy, tragedy, and the satyr play - as well as lyric poetry and epic poetry). They are similar in the fact that they are all imitations but different in the three ways that Aristotle describes: 1. Differences in music rhythm, harmony, meter and melody. 2. Difference of goodness in the characters. 3. Difference in how the narrative is presented: telling a story or acting it out. In examining its "first principles," Aristotle finds two: 1) imitation and 2) genres and other concepts by which that of truth is applied/revealed in the poesis. His analysis of tragedy constitutes the core of the discussion. Although Aristotle's Poetics is universally acknowledged in the Western critical tradition, "almost every detail about his seminal work has aroused divergent opinions."
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Plato written by Richard Kraut and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1992-10-30 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fourteen new essays discuss Plato's views about knowledge, reality, mathematics, politics, ethics, love, poetry, and religion in a convenient, accessible guide that analyzes the intellectual and social background of his thought as well.
Download or read book Aristotle s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art written by Samuel Henry Butcher and published by . This book was released on 1923 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Plato and the Poets written by Pierre Destrée and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2011-03-21 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plato’s discussions of poetry and the poets stand at the cradle of Western literary criticism. Plato is, paradoxically, both the philosopher who cites, or alludes to, works of poetry more than any other, and the one who is at the same time the harshest critic of poetry. The nineteen essays presented here aim to offer various avenues to this paradox, and to illuminate the ways poetry and the poets are discussed by Plato throughout his writing career, from the Apology and the Ion to the Laws. As well as throwing new light on old topics, such as mimesis and poetic inspiration, the volume introduces fresh approaches to Plato’s philosophy of poetry and literature.
Download or read book Aristotle s Poetics written by Stephen Halliwell and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1998-12 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this, the fullest, sustained interpretation of Aristotle's Poetics available in English, Stephen Halliwell demonstrates that the Poetics, despite its laconic brevity, is a coherent statement of a challenging theory of poetic art, and it hints towards a theory of mimetic art in general. Assessing this theory against the background of earlier Greek views on poetry and art, particularly Plato's, Halliwell goes further than any previous author in setting Aristotle's ideas in the wider context of his philosophical system. The core of the book is a fresh appraisal of Aristotle's view of tragic drama, in which Halliwell contends that at the heart of the Poetics lies a philosophical urge to instill a secularized understanding of Greek tragedy. "Essential reading not only for all serious students of the Poetics . . . but also for those—the great majority—who have prudently fought shy of it altogether."—B. R. Rees, Classical Review "A splendid work of scholarship and analysis . . . a brilliant interpretation."—Alexander Nehamas, Times Literary Supplement
Download or read book Frontiers of Pleasure written by Anastasia-Erasmia Peponi and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-08-23 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Frontiers of Pleasure calls into question a number of influential modern notions regarding aesthetics by going back to the very beginnings of aesthetic thought in Greece and raising critical issues regarding conceptions of how one responds to the beautiful. Despite a recent rebirth of interest in aesthetics, extensive discussion of this key cluster of topics has been absent. Anatasia-Erasmia Peponi argues that although the Greek language had no formal term equivalent to the "aesthetic," the notion was deeply rooted in Greek thought. Her analysis centers on a dominant aspect of beauty - the aural - associated with a highly influential sector of culture that comprised both poetry and instrumental music, the "activity of the Muses," or mousik . The main argument relies on a series of close readings of literary and philosophical texts, from Homer and Plato through Kant, Joyce, and Proust. Through detailed attention to such scenes as Odysseus' encounter with the Sirens and Hermes' playing of his lyre for his brother Apollo, she demonstrates that the most telling moments in the conceptualization of the aesthetic come in the Greeks' debates and struggles over intense models of auditory pleasure. Unlike current tendencies to treat poetry as an early, imperfect mode of meditating upon such issues, Peponi claims that Greek poetry and philosophy employed equally complex, albeit different, ways of articulating notions of aesthetic response. Her approach often leads her to partial or total disagreement with earlier interpretations of some of the most well-known Greek texts of the archaic and classical periods. Frontiers of Pleasure thus suggests an alternative mode of understanding aesthetics in its entirety, freed from some modern preconceptions that have become a hindrance within the field.
Download or read book The Tragedy and Comedy of Life written by Plato and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-04 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With The Tragedy and Comedy of Life, Seth Benardete completes his examination of Plato's understanding of the beautiful, the just, and the good. Benardete first treated the beautiful in The Being of the Beautiful (1984), which dealt with the Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman; and he treated the just in Socrates Second Sailing (1989), which dealt with the Republic and sought to determine the just in its relation to the beautiful and the good. Benardete focuses in this volume on the good as discussed in the Philebus, which is widely regarded as one of Plato's most complex dialogues. Traditionally, the Philebus is interpreted as affirming the supposedly Platonic doctrine that the good resides in thought and mind rather than in pleasure or the body. Benardete challenges this view, arguing that Socrates vindicates the life of the mind over against the life of pleasure not by separating the two and advocating a strict asceticism, but by mixing pleasure and pain with mind in such a way that the philosophic life emerges as the only possible human life. Socrates accomplishes this by making use of two principles - the limited and the unlimited - and shows that the very possibility of philosophy requires not just the limited but also the unlimited, for the unlimited permeates the entirety of life as well as the endless perplexity of thinking itself. Benardete combines a probing and challenging commentary that subtly mirrors and illumines the complexities of this extraordinarily difficult dialogue with the finest English translation of the Philebus yet available. The result is a work that will be of great value to classicists, philosophers, and political theorists alike.
Download or read book The Ancient Quarrel Between Poetry and Philosophy written by Thomas Gould and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-14 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Affecting audiences with depictions of suffering and injustice is a key function of tragedy, and yet it has long been viewed by philosophers as a dubious enterprise. In this book Thomas Gould uses both historical and theoretical approaches to explore tragedy and its power to gratify readers and audiences. He takes as his starting point Plato's moral and psychological objections to tragedy, and the conflict he recognized between "poetry"--the exploitation of our yearning to see ourselves as victims--and "philosophy"--the insistence that all good people are happy. Plato's objections to tragedy are shown to be an essential feature of Socratic rationalism and to constitute a formidable challenge even today. Gould makes a case for the rightness and psychological necessity of violence and suffering in literature, art, and religion, but he distinguishes between depictions of violence that elicit sympathy only for the victims and those that cause us to sympathize entirely with the perpetrators. It is chiefly the former, Gould argues, that fuel our responses not only to true tragedy but also to religious myths and critical displays of political rage. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Download or read book The Truest Tragedy written by Angelos Kargas and published by Minerva Press (UK). This book was released on 1998 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Particulars of Rapture written by Charles Altieri and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Table of contents
Download or read book Aristotle on the Function of Tragic Poetry written by Gregory Michael Sifakis and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Poetics written by Aristotle and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1997-03-01 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘The plot is the source and the soul of tragedy’ In his near-contemporary account of Greek tragedy, Aristotle examines the dramatic elements of plot, character, language and spectacle that combine to produce pity and fear in the audience, and asks why we derive pleasure from this apparently painful process. Taking examples from the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, the Poetics introduces into literary criticism such central concepts as mimesis (‘imitation’), hamartia (‘error’), and katharsis (‘purification’). Aristotle explains how the most effective tragedies rely on complication and resolution, recognition and reversals, centring on characters of heroic stature, idealized yet true to life. One of the most powerful, perceptive and influential works of criticism in Western literary history, the Poetics has informed serious thinking about drama ever since. Malcolm Heath’s lucid English translation makes the Poetics fully accessible to the modern reader. It is accompanied by an extended introduction, which discusses the key concepts in detail and includes suggestions for further reading.
Download or read book Preface to Plato written by Eric A. HAVELOCK and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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, Eric 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 Iliad 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.
