The Poetics of Philosophical Language

A close analysis of the Republic's diverse literary styles shows how the peculiarities of verbal texture in Platonic discourse can be explained by Plato's remolding of tropes and techniques from poetry and the Presocratics. This book argues that Plato smuggles poetic language into the Republic's prose in order to characterize the deceitful coloration and polymorphy that accompanies the world of Becoming as opposed to the Real. Plato's distinctive discourse thus can transmit, even to those figures focused on the visual within his Republic, the shiftiness of the base and the unjust.

Auteur

Zacharoula A. Petraki, University of the Peloponnese and University of Crete, Greece.

Résumé

"The idea that the language of the Republic constitutes a highly complex mosaic in which images predominate and in which different modes of linguistic configuration converge is at any rate interesting."
Patrizia Marzillo in: BMCR 2012.08.59