Muthos

Muthos
Author: Loren D. Marsh
Publisher: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht
Total Pages: 213
Release: 2021-04-12
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3949189041

This book presents a new analysis of Aristotle's concept of narrative in the Poetics. Arguing that the term muthos in the Poetics cannot be understood as equivalent to "plot," Marsh shows that the muthos concept is instead a useful tool for grouping larger sets of narratives based on specific criteria. The results of this muthos analysis indicate that in the classical period, neither formal structure nor the structure of events was determined by theatrical genre, but by the specific combination of tone and plot type. Marsh concludes that the category of genre itself may be less helpful for classifying these plays than is typically assumed.

Logos and Muthos

Logos and Muthos
Author: William Wians
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2010-07-02
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1438427433

Explores the philosophical dimensions present in the works of ancient Greek poets and playwrights.

Plato the Myth Maker

Plato the Myth Maker
Author: Luc Brisson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 1998
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780226075181

We think of myth as a fictional story, and Plato was the first to use the term muthos in that sense. But Plato also used muthos to describe the practice of making and telling stories, the oral transmission of all that a community keeps in its collective memory. In the first part of Plato the Myth Maker, Luc Brisson reconstructs Plato's multifaceted and not uncritical description of muthos in light of the latter's famous Atlantis story. The second part of the book contrasts this sense of myth, as Plato does, with another form of speech that he believed was far superior: the logos of philosophy. Appearing for the first time in English, Plato the Myth Maker is a solid and important contribution to the history of myth, based on the privileged testimony of one of its most influential critics and supporters.

The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy

The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy
Author: P. E. Easterling
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 414
Release: 1997-10-02
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9780521423519

As a creative medium, ancient Greek tragedy has had an extraordinarily wide influence: many of the surviving plays are still part of the theatrical repertoire, and texts like Agamemnon, Antigone, and Medea have had a profound effect on Western culture. This Companion is not a conventional introductory textbook but an attempt, by seven distinguished scholars, to present the familiar corpus in the context of modern reading, criticism, and performance of Greek tragedy. There are three main emphases: on tragedy as an institution in the civic life of ancient Athens, on a range of different critical interpretations arising from fresh readings of the texts, and on changing patterns of reception, adaptation, and performance from antiquity to the present. Each chapter can be read independently, but each is linked with the others, and most examples are drawn from the same selection of plays.

The Task of the Interpreter

The Task of the Interpreter
Author: Pol Vandevelde
Publisher:
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2005-09-30
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN:

The Task of the Interpreter offers a new approach to what it means to interpret a text, and reconciles the possibility of multiple interpretations with the need to consider the author’s intention. Vandevelde argues that interpretation is both an act and an event: It is an act in that interpreters, through the statements they make, implicitly commit themselves to justifying their positions, if prompted. It is an event in that interpreters are situated in a cultural and historical framework and come to a text with questions, concerns, and methods of which they are not fully conscious. These two aspects make interpretation a negotiation of meaning. The Task of the Interpreter provides an interdisciplinary investigation of textual interpretation including biblical hermeneutics (Gregory the Great’s Homilies on Ezekiel), translation (Homer’s The Odyssey), and literary fictions (Grass’s Dog Years and Sabato’s On Heroes and Tombs). Vandevelde’s philosophical discussion will appeal to theorists of both continental and analytical/pragmatic traditions.

Logoi and Muthoi

Logoi and Muthoi
Author: William Wians
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2019-05-09
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1438474903

In Logoi and Muthoi, William Wians builds on his earlier volume Logos and Muthos, highlighting the richness and complexity of these terms that were once set firmly in opposition to one another as reason versus myth or rationality versus irrationality. It was once common to think of intellectual history representing a straightforward progression from mythology to rationality. These volumes, however, demonstrate the value of taking the two together, opening up and analyzing a range of interactions, reactions, tensions, and ambiguities arising between literary and philosophical forms of discourse, including philosophical themes in works not ordinarily considered in the canon of Greek philosophical texts. This new volume considers such topics as the pre-philosophical origins of Anaximander's calendar, the philosophical significance of public performance and claims of poetic inspiration, and the complex role of mythic figures (including perhaps Socrates) in Plato. Taken together, the essays offer new approaches to familiar texts and open up new possibilities for understanding the roles and relationships between muthos and logos in ancient Greek thought.

Unity in Greek Poetics

Unity in Greek Poetics
Author: Malcolm Heath
Publisher:
Total Pages: 200
Release: 1989
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN:

This book reconstructs ancient Greek assumptions about literary unity. Using literary examples, Heath focuses on ancient secondary texts of literary theory and criticism, providing a systematic survey from Plato and Aristotle to the later Neoplatonists. He also reviews the post-classical history of the concept of literary unity.