Plato the Myth Maker

Brisson, Luc

ISBN 10: 0226075184 / ISBN 13: 9780226075181

Published by University of Chicago Press, 1999

About this Item

Fine copy. Fine complete dustwrapper. Owner signature to front endpaper.

Seller Inventory # 045789

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Plato the Myth Maker
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication Date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226075184
• ISBN 13: 9780226075181
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine

About this title

Synopsis

One thinks of a myth as a fictional story, and Plato was the first to use the term "muthos" in that sense. But Plato also used "muthos" to describe the practice of making and telling myths, the oral transmission of all that a community keeps in its collective memory. In the first part of this text, Luc Brisson reconstructs Plato's multifaceted and not uncritical description of "muthos" in light of the latter's famous Atlantis story. The second part of the book contrasts this sense of myth, as Plato does, with another form of speech which he believed was far superior: the "logos" of philosophy. Brisson's work is part lexical, part philosophical, and part ethnological, and Gerard Naddaf's introduction shows the originality and importance both of Brisson's method and of Plato's analysis in the context of contemporary debates over the origin and evolution of the oral tradition.

About the Author

Luc Brisson is director of research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France. He is the author of several books including Plato the Mythmaker, published in English by the University of Chicago Press. Catherine Tihanyi, a research associate at Western Washington University, has translated a number of books for the University of Chicago Press, including Adam Biro's Two Jews on a Train.