Genres in Dialogue
Genres in Dialogue
This 1995 book takes as its starting point Plato's incorporation of specific genres of poetry and rhetoric into his dialogues. The author argues that Plato's 'dialogues' with traditional genres are part and parcel of his effort to define 'philosophy'. Before Plato, 'philosophy' designated 'intellectual cultivation' in the broadest sense. When Plato appropriated the term for his own intellectual project, he created a new and specialised discipline. In order to define and legitimise 'philosophy', Plato had to match it against genres of discourse that had authority and currency in democratic Athens. By incorporating the text or discourse of another genre, Plato 'defines' his new brand of wisdom in opposition to traditional modes of thinking and speaking. By targeting individual genres of discourse Plato marks the boundaries of 'philosophy' as a discursive and as a social practice.
- An investigation of Plato's 'invention' of philosophy
- A literary and historical study of Plato
- Well received and well written book on a question of current interest
Reviews & endorsements
"This fascinating study sheds new light on the old puzzle: despite his notorious attack on poetry, Plato was a literary genius. Nightingale does not simply explore literary aspects of Plato's writings, however; she articulates deep structural and thematic relations between the dialogues and the alien literary genres of tragedy, lyric, and comedy." Choice
"This fascinating study sheds new light on the old puzzle: despite his notorious attack on poetry, Plato was a literary genius. Nightingale does not simply explore literary aspects of Plato's writings, however; she articulates deep structural and thematic relations between the dialogues and the alien literary genres of tragedy, lyric, and comedy....Strongly recommended for college and university libraries." Choice
"Andrea Nightingale's fine book on Plato and the 'construct' of philosophy is everywhere responsive to the contingency of philosophical discourse....this work thus provides essential philological insights into the distinctions between philosophy and its rival forms of discourse (including poetry and rhetoric) at a moment when those boundaries first came to be demarcated in an explicit and systematic way." Philosophy of Literature
"The merits of Nightingale's book are considerable. It deals with many questions of language and discourse that are dear to postmodernists, but it treats them with clarity which an analytic philosopher will appreciate." Joseph A. Novak, Review of Metaphysics
Product details
January 1996Hardback
9780521482646
240 pages
238 × 164 × 27 mm
0.53kg
Available
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations and texts
- Introduction
- 1. Plato, Isocrates and the property of philosophy
- 2. Use and abuse of Athenian tragedy
- 3. Eulogy, irony, parody
- 4. Alien and authentic discourse
- 5. Philosophy and comedy
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- General index
- Index of passages from Plato.
