Read Anywhere and on Any Device!

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!

Create Free Account

How Philosophers Saved Myths: Allegorical Interpretation and Classical Mythology

3.5/5 ( ratings)

This study explains how the myths of Greece and Rome were transmitted from antiquity to the Renaissance. Luc Brisson argues that philosophy was ironically responsible for saving myth from historical annihilation. Although philosophy was initially critical of myth because it could not be declared true or false and because it was inferior to argumentation, mythology was progressively reincorporated into philosophy through allegorical exegesis. Brisson shows to what degree allegory was employed among philosophers and how it enabled myth to take on a number of different interpretive systems throughout the centuries: moral, physical, psychological, political, and even metaphysical.

How Philosophers Saved Myths also describes how, during the first years of the modern era, allegory followed a more religious path, which was to assume a larger role in Neoplatonism. Ultimately, Brisson explains how this embrace of myth was carried forward by Byzantine thinkers and artists throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance; after the triumph of Chistianity, Brisson argues, myths no longer had to agree with just history and philosophy but the dogmas of the Church as well.

Language: English

Pages: 206

Format: Hardcover

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Release: December 01, 2004

ISBN: 0226075354

ISBN 13: 9780226075358

How Philosophers Saved Myths: Allegorical Interpretation and Classical Mythology

3.5/5 ( ratings)

This study explains how the myths of Greece and Rome were transmitted from antiquity to the Renaissance. Luc Brisson argues that philosophy was ironically responsible for saving myth from historical annihilation. Although philosophy was initially critical of myth because it could not be declared true or false and because it was inferior to argumentation, mythology was progressively reincorporated into philosophy through allegorical exegesis. Brisson shows to what degree allegory was employed among philosophers and how it enabled myth to take on a number of different interpretive systems throughout the centuries: moral, physical, psychological, political, and even metaphysical.

How Philosophers Saved Myths also describes how, during the first years of the modern era, allegory followed a more religious path, which was to assume a larger role in Neoplatonism. Ultimately, Brisson explains how this embrace of myth was carried forward by Byzantine thinkers and artists throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance; after the triumph of Chistianity, Brisson argues, myths no longer had to agree with just history and philosophy but the dogmas of the Church as well.

Language: English

Pages: 206

Format: Hardcover

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Release: December 01, 2004

ISBN: 0226075354

ISBN 13: 9780226075358

More books from Luc Brisson

Apologie de Socrate/Criton

3.7/5 ( ratings)

Plato's Universe

4.3/5 ( ratings)

Traités 30-37

3.6/5 ( ratings)

Plotin - un mistic păgân

Filosofía griega 1. De Tales a Aristóteles (Filosofía Griega #1)

Filosofía griega 2. La filosofía en la época helenística (Filosofía griega #2)

As Leis de Platão

Sexual Ambivalence: Androgyny and Hermaphroditism in Graeco-Roman Antiquity

Bisexualité et différence des sexes

Puissance et Limites de la Raison: Le Probleme des Valeurs

Plato's "Parmenides" and Its Heritage: Volume 1: History and Interpretation from the Old Academy to Later Platonism and Gnosticism

Gorgias - Menon: Selected Papers from the Seventh Symposium Platonicum

Le même et l'autre dans la structure ontologique du Timée de Platon; un commentaire systématique du Timée de Platon

How Philosophers Saved Myths: Allegorical Interpretation and Classical Mythology

Le vocabulaire de Platon

Platon

Rate this book!

Write a review?