The Poetics of Philosophical Language

The Poetics of Philosophical Language PDF Author: Zacharoula A. Petraki
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110260972
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
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.

The Poetics of Philosophical Language

The Poetics of Philosophical Language PDF Author: Zacharoula A. Petraki
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110260972
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
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.

Wittgenstein's Ladder

Wittgenstein's Ladder PDF Author: Marjorie Perloff
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226660608
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
Austere and uncompromising, the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein had no use for the avant-garde art works of his own time. He refused to formulate an aesthetic, declaring that one can no more define the "beautiful" than determine "what sort of coffee tastes good". And yet many of the writers of our time have understood, as academic theorists generally have not, that Wittgenstein is "their" philosopher. How do we resolve this paradox? Marjorie Perloff, our foremost critic of twentieth-century poetry, argues that Wittgenstein has provided writers with a radical new aesthetic, a key to recognizing the inescapable strangeness of ordinary language. Wittgenstein's ladder is an apt figure for this radical aesthetic, and not just in its ordinariness as an object. The movement "up" this ladder can never be more than what Wittgenstein's contemporary, Gertrude Stein, called "Beginning again and again". Wittgenstein shows us, too, that we cannot climb the same ladder twice: the use of language, the context in which words and sentences appear, defines their meaning, which changes with every repetition. Wittgenstein's aesthetic brooks no theory, no essentialism, no metalanguage - only a practice, a mode of operation, fragmentary and elliptical.

Ancient Philosophical Poetics

Ancient Philosophical Poetics PDF Author: Malcolm Heath
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521198798
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
Reveals how ancient philosophers approached questions about the nature of poetry, its ethical and social impact and access to truth.

The Material of Poetry

The Material of Poetry PDF Author: Gerald L. Bruns
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 9780820327013
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
Poetry is philosophically interesting, writes Gerald L. Bruns, "when it is innovative not just in its practices, but, before everything else, in its poetics (that is, in its concepts or theories of itself)." In The Material of Poetry, Bruns considers the possibility that anything, under certain conditions, may be made to count as a poem. By spelling out such enabling conditions he gives us an engaging overview of some of the kinds of contemporary poetry that challenge our notions of what language is: sound poetry, visual or concrete poetry, and "found" poetry. Poetry's sense and meaning can hide in the spaces in which it is written and read, says Bruns, and so he urges us to become anthropologists, to go afield in poetry's social, historical, and cultural settings. From that perspective, Bruns draws on works by such varied poets as Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, Steve McCaffery, and Francis Ponge to argue for three seemingly competing points. First, poetry is made of language but is not a use of it. That is, poetry is made of words but not of what we use words to produce: concepts, narratives, expressions of feeling, and so on. Second, as the nine sound poems on the CD included with the book demonstrate, poetry is not necessarily made of words but is rooted in, and in fact already fully formed by, sounds the human body can produce. Finally, poetry belongs to the world alongside ordinary things; it cannot be confined to some aesthetic, neutral, or disengaged dimension of human culture. Poetry without frontiers, unmoored from expectations, and sometimes even written in imaginary languages: Bruns shows us why, for the sake of all poetry, we should embrace its anarchic, vitalizing ways.

The Philosophy of Poetry

The Philosophy of Poetry PDF Author: John Gibson
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199603677
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
In recent years philosophers have produced important books on nearly all the major arts: the novel and painting, music and theatre, dance and architecture, conceptual art and even gardening. Poetry is the sole exception. This is an astonishing omission, one this collection of original essays will correct. If contemporary philosophy still regards metaphors such as 'Juliet is the sun' as a serious problem, one has an acute sense of how prepared it is to make philosophical and aesthetic sense of poems such W. B. Yeats's 'The Second Coming', Sylvia Plath's 'Daddy', or Paul Celan's 'Todesfuge'. The Philosophy of Poetry brings together philosophers of art, language, and mind to expose and address the array of problems poetry raises for philosophy. In doing so it lays the foundation for a proper philosophy of poetry, setting out the various puzzles and paradoxes that future work in the field will have to address. Given its breadth of approach, the volume is relevant not only to aesthetics but to all areas of philosophy concerned with meaning, truth, and the communicative and expressive powers of language more generally. Poetry is the last unexplored frontier in contemporary analytic aesthetics, and this volume offers a powerful demonstration of how central poetry should be to philosophy.

Philosophy and Poetry

Philosophy and Poetry PDF Author: Ranjan Ghosh
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231547242
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 406

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Book Description
Ever since Plato’s Socrates exiled the poets from the ideal city in The Republic, Western thought has insisted on a strict demarcation between philosophy and poetry. Yet might their long-standing quarrel hide deeper affinities? This book explores the distinctive ways in which twentieth-century and contemporary continental thinkers have engaged with poetry and its contribution to philosophical meaning making, challenging us to rethink how philosophy has been changed through its encounters with poetry. In wide-ranging reflections on thinkers such as Heidegger, Gadamer, Arendt, Lacan, Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze, Irigaray, Badiou, Kristeva, and Agamben, among others, distinguished contributors consider how different philosophers encountered the force and intensity of poetry and the negotiations that took place as they sought resolutions of the quarrel. Instead of a clash between competing worldviews, they figured the relationship between philosophy and poetry as one of productive mutuality, leading toward new modes of thinking and understanding. Spanning a range of issues with nuance and rigor, this compelling and comprehensive book opens new possibilities for philosophical poetry and the poetics of philosophy.

Things Merely are

Things Merely are PDF Author: Simon Critchley
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415356312
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
In this beautifully written and deeply insightful book, Simon Critchley shows how Wallace Stevens's poems contain deep and important philosophical insight.

Lucretius and the Language of Nature

Lucretius and the Language of Nature PDF Author: Barnaby Taylor
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198754906
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
Lucretius' Epicurean poem De Rerum Natura ('On the Nature of Things'), written in the middle of the first century BC, made a fundamental and lasting contribution to the language of Latin philosophy. The style of De Rerum Natura is like nothing else in extant Latin: at once archaic and modern, Romanizing and Hellenizing, intimate and sublime, it draws on multiple literary genres and linguistic registers. This book offers a study of Lucretius' linguistic innovation and creativity. Lucretius is depicted as a linguistic trailblazer, extending and augmenting the technical language of Latin in order to describe the Epicurean universe of atoms and void in all its complexity and sublimity. A detailed understanding of the Epicurean linguistic theory brings with it a greater appreciation of Lucretius' own language. Accordingly, this book features an in-depth reconstruction of certain core features of Epicurean linguistic theory. Elements of Lucretius' style discussed include his attitudes to, and use of, figurative language (especially metaphor); his explorations, both explicit and implicit, of Latin etymology; his uses of Greek; and his creative deployment of compounds and prefixed words. His practice is related throughout not only to the underlying Epicurean theory but also to contemporary Roman attitudes to style and language. The result is a new reading of one of the greatest and most difficult works to survive from the Roman world.

The Philosophy and Science of Language

The Philosophy and Science of Language PDF Author: Ryan M. Nefdt
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030554384
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 449

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Book Description
This volume brings together a diverse range of scholars to address important philosophical and interdisciplinary questions in the study of language. Linguistics throughout history has been a conduit to the study of the mind, brain, societal structure, literature and history itself. The epistemic and methodological transfer between the sciences and humanities in regards to linguistics has often been documented, but the underlying philosophical issues have not always been adequately addressed. With 15 original and interdisciplinary chapters, this volume therefore tackles vital questions relating to the philosophy, history, and theoretical interplay between the study of language and fields as varied as logic, physics, biology, classical philology and neuroscience. With a four part structure, questions of the mathematical foundations of linguistics, links to the natural sciences, cognitive implications and historical connections, take centre stage throughout the volume. The final chapters present research related to the linguistic connections between history, philosophy and the humanities more broadly. Advancing new avenues of research, this volume is exemplary in its treatment of diachronic and cross-disciplinary interaction, and will be of interest to all scholars interested in the study of language.

Between Ecstasy and Truth

Between Ecstasy and Truth PDF Author: Stephen Halliwell
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 0199570566
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
As well as producing one of the finest of all poetic traditions, ancient Greek culture produced a major tradition of poetic theory and criticism. Halliwell's volume offers a series of detailed and challenging interpretations of some of the defining authors and texts in the history of ancient Greek poetics: the Homeric epics, Aristophanes' Frogs, Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Poetics, Gorgias's Helen, Isocrates' treatises, Philodemus' On Poems, and Longinus On the Sublime. The volume's fundamental concern is with how the Greeks conceptualized the experience of poetry and debated the values of that experience. The book's organizing theme is a recurrent Greek dialectic between ideas of poetry as, on the one hand, a powerfully enthralling experience in its own right (a kind of 'ecstasy') and, on the other, a medium for the expression of truths which can exercise lasting influence on its audiences' views of the world. Citing a wide range of modern scholarship, and making frequent connections with later periods of literary theory and aesthetics, Halliwell questions many orthodoxies and received opinions about the texts analysed. The resulting perspective casts new light on ways in which the Greeks attempted to make sense of the psychology of poetic experience - including the roles of emotion, ethics, imagination, and knowledge - in the life of their culture.