Description
Book SynopsisPlato'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.
Trade ReviewThis book makes a major contribution…will offer the reader many hours of stimulating thought and a powerful challenge to reexamine some basic assumptions about the early Greek mind. * The Classical Bulletin *
The frontiers of several fields of research meet in this rich and germinal study. Professor Havelock is concerned with Greek epic poetry and Plato’s attack on it, with the whole of the Greek
paideia as it existed before and after Plato, with the technological problems of communication, and, finally, with the emergence of Plato’s doctrine of ‘forms,’ in its total cultural setting… In brief, Havelock’s point is that Plato’s attack on poetry is integral to his philosophy as such if we see poetry as what it really was in his day… Havelock’s thesis is a sweeping one, and, on the whole, utterly convincing, tying in with the findings of an increasing number of recent psychological, historical, philosophical, and cultural studies. -- Walter J. Ong
A book bursting with new ideas, all of them exciting. It may well turn out to be a landmark in the study of Greek thought and literature. -- B. M. W. Knox
Table of ContentsPART ONE: The Image-Thinkers 1. Plato On Poetry 2. Mimesis 3. Poetry as Preserved Communication 4. The Homeric Encyclopedia 5. Eric as Recorded as Record Versus Epic as Narrative 6. Hesiod on Poetry 7. The Oral Sources of the Hellenic Intelligence 8. The Homeric State of Mind 9. The Psychology of the Poetic Performance 10. The Content and Quality of the Poetised Statement PART TWO: The Necessity of Platonism 11. Psyche or the Separation of the Knower From The Know 12. The Recognition of the Known as Object 13. Poetry as Opinion 14. The Origin of the Theory of Forms 15. 'The Supreme Music is Philosophy'
