Research Catalog

Title

Preface to Plato / Eric A. Havelock.

Author

Havelock, Eric A. (Eric Alfred), 1903-1988.

Publication

Cambridge : Belknap Press : Harvard University Press, 1963.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Dedalus Foundation, donor NN

Description

xiv, 328 pages; 22 cm.

Summary

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.

Series Statement

A History of the Greek mind ; v. 1

Uniform Title

History of the Greek mind ; v. 1.

Subjects

• Criticism, interpretation, etc
• Philosophy, Ancient
• Plato
• Greek poetry > History and criticism

Genre/Form

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 312-315) and index.

Source (note)

• of the Dedalus Foundation;

Contents

Part one- the image thinkers -- Plato on poetry -- Mimesis -- Poetry as preserved communication -- The homeric encyclopedia -- Epic as recorded versus epic as narrative -- Hesiod on poetry -- The oral sources of the hellenic intelligence -- The homeric state of mind -- The psychology of the poetic performance -- The content and quality of the poetised statement -- Part two: The necessity of platonism -- Psyche or the separation of the knower from the known -- The recognition of the known as an object -- Poetry as opinion -- The origin of the theory of forms -- "The supreme music is philosophy."

Call Number

ReCAP 24-4471

ISBN

• 0674699068
• 9780674699069

LCCN

62013859

OCLC

373566

Author

Havelock, Eric A. (Eric Alfred), 1903-1988.

Title

Preface to Plato / Eric A. Havelock.

Imprint

Cambridge : Belknap Press : Harvard University Press, 1963.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

A History of the Greek mind ; v. 1

History of the Greek mind ; v. 1.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 312-315) and index.

Local Note

Copy in ReCAP 24-4471 inscribed.

Source

Gift; of the Dedalus Foundation; 2024. NN

Connect to:

Table of contents

Added Author

Dedalus Foundation, donor NN

Other Form:

Online version: Havelock, Eric Alfred. Preface to Plato. Cambridge, Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, 1963 (OCoLC)578408646

Research Call Number

ReCAP 24-4471