{"product_id":"9780826214799","title":"Plato through Homer: Poetry and Philosophy in the Cosmological Dialogues","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis new study challenges traditional ways of reading Plato by showing that his philosophy and political theory cannot be understood apart from a consideration of the literary or aesthetic features of his writing. More specifically, it shows how Plato’s well-known cosmological dialogues—the \u003ci\u003ePhaedrus, Timaeus, \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eCritias\u003c\/i\u003e—are structured using several books of the \u003ci\u003eOdyssey \u003c\/i\u003eas their shared source text.\u003cbr\u003eWhile there has recently been much scholarly discussion of the relation between poetry and philosophy in Plato’s dialogues, little of it addresses questions central to thoroughgoing literary criticism. Planinc’s work is unique in that it shows the significance of Plato’s extensive refiguring of key episodes in the \u003ci\u003eOdyssey\u003c\/i\u003e for an interpretation of his political philosophy.\u003cbr\u003ePlato’s cosmological dialogues are almost always discussed topically. The \u003ci\u003eTimaeus \u003c\/i\u003eis picked through for its theological or scientific doctrines; the \u003ci\u003eCritias \u003c\/i\u003eis reduced to its Atlantis story, or puzzled over because of its ostensible incompleteness; and the \u003ci\u003ePhaedrus\u003c\/i\u003e is read for its parallels to modern understandings of erotics or rhetoric. The dialogues are not usually considered in relation to one another, and then only in the context of developmental schemes primarily concerned with distinguishing periods in Plato’s metaphysical doctrines.\u003cbr\u003ePlaninc argues that the main literary features of the \u003ci\u003ePhaedrus,\u003c\/i\u003e\u003ci\u003eTimaeus,\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eCritias \u003c\/i\u003eare taken from books 6 to 9 of the \u003ci\u003eOdyssey,\u003c\/i\u003e the largest part of the story of Odysseus’s stay with the Phaeacians, from the time he swims to shore and encounters Nausicaa to the time he reveals his identity and begins recounting his earlier travels after hearing Demodocus’s songs. By exploring the full range of the many charming and intriguing things the dialogues present in this literary context, he shows that they are a coherent, unified part of Plato’s corpus.\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ePlato through Homer\u003c\/i\u003e takes a radically new approach to Plato’s texts that illuminates their literary and philosophic significance and highlights their enduring appeal.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"University of Missouri Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47022064697584,"sku":"9780826214799","price":45.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780826214799_p0.jpg?v=1763753772","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780826214799","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}