Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 17, No. 165.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
www.princeton.edu/humanist/
Submit to: humanist@princeton.edu
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 06:40:19 +0100
From: gerda@bgumail.bgu.ac.il
Subject: re 17.038 nesting and linear narratives
As a latecomer to this discussion and re: the mentioning of the introductory
section of Plato's Symposium.
I've always felt that the contextualizing parts (the nested narrative) of
Plato's dialogues subvert the "truth" these dialogues are ostentatiusly
after, among others (the S. extremely so!) by foregrounding the
unreliability of the report of the discussion (of which the written version
is again a report, tainted - a Plato asserts elsewhere by the fact of being
written). It's one of the functions of nested narratives in general, but of
course noteworthy in the case of a philosphy of truth.
By the way, has anyone written on this aspect of the Symposium?
Gerda Elata-Alster
[See Humanist 17.038. -- WM]
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