{"product_id":"preface-to-plato-eric-a-havelock-9780674699069","title":"Preface to Plato","description":"\u003cp\u003ePlato'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. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe reason for the dominance of this tradition was technological. In a nonliterate culture, stored experience necessary to cultural stability had to be preserved as poetry in order to be memorized. Plato attacks poets, particularly Homer, as the sole source of Greek moral and technical instruction--Mr. Havelock shows how the \u003ci\u003eIliad\u003c\/i\u003e acted as an oral encyclopedia. Under the label of mimesis, Plato condemns the poetic process of emotional identification and the necessity of presenting content as a series of specific images in a continued narrative. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe second part of the book discusses the Platonic Forms as an aspect of an increasingly rational culture. Literate Greece demanded, instead of poetic discourse, a vocabulary and a sentence structure both abstract and explicit in which experience could be described normatively and analytically: in short a language of ethics and science.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Eric A. Havelock\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0674699068\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780674699069\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Belknap Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 04\/15\/1982\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 342\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.00lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.22h x 5.43w x 1.02d","brand":"Eric A. Havelock","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":44616891924735,"sku":"9780674699069","price":30.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_269bfd6c-01f0-4c54-a052-9066c0bd9882.jpg?v=1703022902","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/preface-to-plato-eric-a-havelock-9780674699069","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}