CamScanner App Features Quiz

Critical Reading in a Changing World

• Critical reading is increasingly important, especially after events like September 11, 2001.
• Misunderstanding and poor education can have serious consequences.
• Understanding diverse voices, both from other cultures and within one's own, is vital.
• Critical study of one's own past (through documents, cultural, political, and religious texts) aids understanding of the present.

Methodology of the Book

• This book's methodology focuses on five key principles.
• Modern literary criticism often uses concepts rooted in philosophy and other disciplines.
• The book aims to contextualize literary history within the broader currents of Western thought.
• Examples are provided, like examining Plato and Kant's views on poetry.

Ancient Greek Literary Criticism

• Our English word "criticism" derives from the Greek term "krites," meaning "judge."
• Early criticism was integrated into the creative process of poetry, involving judgment about themes, techniques, and audience appeal.
• Ancient Greek criticism, encompassing the classical period (around 500 BC) and the Hellenistic period (323 BC onward), encompassed drama, poetry, philosophy, rhetoric, and the rise of Athenian democracy and power.
• The study of figures like Homer, Hesiod, Archilochus, Ibycus, Alcaeus, and Sappho represents significant moments in the development of Greek literary and critical traditions.
• Greek-style literary criticism encompassed self-assessment, reflection and judgment.
• The Athenian festivals saw literary criticism used to entertain and educate.
• Aristophanes’ plays like "The Frogs" show early instances of literary criticism.
• The play judged two famous tragic poets Aeschylus and Euripides regarding moral, ethical standards of poetry.
• The play used a courtroom setting to decide which of the poets was greater in ability and impact on Athenian society.

Greek Literary Criticism: Historical & Political Contexts

• Understanding ancient Greek criticism requires knowledge of the political, economic, and social contexts.
• The rise and fall of Athens and Sparta were critical in shaping Greek culture.
• Athens practiced a direct democracy; Sparta was governed by an oligarchy.
• The Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta had a significant impact on the development of thought about both poetry and politics.
• Plato and Aristotle were deeply affected by the ongoing political and military conflicts of their time.

Plato's Philosophy & Criticism

• Plato's philosophy offers an alternative view to the ideas and traditions of the poets.
• Plato critiques aspects of poets and orators in relation to democracy and truth.
• Plato emphasized truth and wisdom over emotion and imagination.
• Plato argues that poetry encourages emotional responses, which may be destabilizing to societal order.
• Plato's ideal state is rooted in reason, not emotion
• The Republic's allegory of the cave illustrates the nature and value of truth.
• Plato viewed poetry and rhetoric as potentially dangerous to the ideal state.

Plato's Theory of Forms

• Plato's theory of forms posits that the world we perceive through our senses is only a shadow of a higher, ideal reality.
• Ideal Forms are eternal, unchanging, and perfect essences, not contingent, physical objects
• The physical world, in contrast, is constantly changing and imperfect.
• Every physical object is a reflection or a “copy” of a corresponding Form.
• The theory posits a correspondence between the ideal Form and a class of physical objects, unifying a collection of physical objects into a common category.
• Plato's theory of the ideal Forms is related to his views on justice and the nature of the ideal state.

Other Important Concepts

• Pan-Hellenism
• Concepts of imitation (mimesis) and authority in relation to literature and poetry
• The relation of writing, speech, and poetry in terms of their capacity to transmit knowledge of truth

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