The Bow And The Lyre: A Platonic Reading Of The Odyssey

Lanham / London: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1997. Hardcover. VG (ex-library w/ stamps to textblock edges, internal stamps, usual markings, etc. dustjacket has ID to lower spine; taped to cover edges; plastic scuffed & ink-like staining to back cover). black boards w/ gilt spine printing. book xiv, 177 pgs. light grey dustjacket w/ orange & green printing; protective plastic. From a college library. Due date slip has one removal stamp. Pages clean. "In this exciting new interpretation of the Odyssey, renowned scholar Seth Benardete suggests that Homer may have been the first to philosophize in a Platonic sense. He argues that the Odyssey (truncated) concerns precisely the relation between philosophy and poetry and, more broadly, the rational and the irrational in human beings. In light of this possibility, Benardete works back and forth from Homer to Plato to examine the relation between wisdom and justice and tries to recover an original understanding of philosophy that Plato too recovered by reflecting on the wisdom of the poet. At stake in his argument is no less than the history of philosophy and the ancient understanding of poetry. The Bow and the Lyre is a book that every classicist and historian of philosophy should have."--WorldCat. (Inventory #: 185903)