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Nearly all of us have studied poetry and been taught to look for the symbolic as well as literal meaning of the text. Is this the way the ancients saw poetry? In Birth of the Symbol, Peter Struck explores the ancient Greek literary critics and theorists who invented the idea of the poetic "symbol." The book notes that Aristotle and his followers did not discuss the use of poetic symbolism. Rather, a different group of Greek thinkers--the allegorists--were the first to develop the notion. Struck extensively revisits the work of the great allegorists, which has been underappreciated. He links their interest in symbolism to the importance of divination and magic in ancient times, and he demonstrates how important symbolism became when they thought about religion and philosophy. "They see the whole of great poetic language as deeply figurative," he writes, "with the potential always, even in the most mundane details, to be freighted with hidden messages." Birth of the Symbol offers a new understanding of the role of poetry in the life of ideas in ancient Greece. Moreover, it demonstrates a connection between the way we understand poetry and the way it was understood by important thinkers in ancient times.

Books and reading --- Classical poetry --- Rhetoric, Ancient. --- Symbolism in literature. --- History and criticism. --- Allegory. --- Poésie ancienne --- Symbolisme dans la littérature --- Livres et lecture --- Rhétorique ancienne --- Allégorie --- Histoire et critique --- History and criticism --- Symbolism in literature --- Greece --- Rome --- Rhetoric [Ancient ] --- Allegory --- Rhetoric, Ancient --- Signs and symbols in literature --- Symbolism in folk literature --- Ancient rhetoric --- Classical languages --- Greek language --- Greek rhetoric --- Latin language --- Latin rhetoric --- Appraisal of books --- Books --- Choice of books --- Evaluation of literature --- Literature --- Reading, Choice of --- Reading and books --- Reading habits --- Reading public --- Reading --- Reading interests --- Reading promotion --- Personification in literature --- Rhetoric --- Appraisal --- Evaluation

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Divination and Human Nature casts a new perspective on the rich tradition of ancient divination-the reading of divine signs in oracles, omens, and dreams. Popular attitudes during classical antiquity saw these readings as signs from the gods while modern scholars have treated such beliefs as primitive superstitions. In this book, Peter Struck reveals instead that such phenomena provoked an entirely different accounting from the ancient philosophers. These philosophers produced subtle studies into what was an odd but observable fact-that humans could sometimes have uncanny insights-and their work signifies an early chapter in the cognitive history of intuition.Examining the writings of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and the Neoplatonists, Struck demonstrates that they all observed how, setting aside the charlatans and swindlers, some people had premonitions defying the typical bounds of rationality. Given the wide differences among these ancient thinkers, Struck notes that they converged on seeing this surplus insight as an artifact of human nature, projections produced under specific conditions by our physiology. For the philosophers, such unexplained insights invited a speculative search for an alternative and more naturalistic system of cognition.Recovering a lost piece of an ancient tradition, Divination and Human Nature illustrates how philosophers of the classical era interpreted the phenomena of divination as a practice closer to intuition and instinct than magic.

Intuition. --- Divination --- Philosophy, Ancient.

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Allegory is a vast subject, and its knotty history is daunting to students and even advanced scholars venturing outside their own historical specializations. This Companion will present, lucidly, systematically, and expertly, the various threads that comprise the allegorical tradition over its entire chronological range. Beginning with Greek antiquity, the volume shows how the earliest systems of allegory developed in poetry dealing with philosophy, mystical religion, and hermeneutics. Once the earliest histories and themes of the allegorical tradition have been presented, the volume turns to literary, intellectual, and cultural manifestations of allegory through the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The essays in the last section address literary and theoretical approaches to allegory in the modern era, from reactions to allegory in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to reevaluations of its power in the thought of the twentieth century and beyond.

Literary semiotics --- Literary rhetorics --- Allegory. --- Allégorie --- Allegory --- Allégorie --- Languages & Literatures --- Literature - General --- Littérature

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How has the nature of ideas evolved over time? How have ideas been shaped, employed and received in different social and cultural contexts?In a work that spans 2,800 years, these ambitious questions are addressed by 62 experts, each contributing an overview of a particular theme in a specific period in history. The volumes explore the development of ideas , primarily in the West, from a range of disciplinary angles. -- Source : editor

History of philosophy --- History of civilization --- History of Europe --- anno 1800-1899 --- Vie intellectuelle --- Intellectual life --- Histoire. --- History. --- Civilization --- Idea (Philosophy) --- World history --- Ancient history --- anno 500-1499 --- anno 1400-1499 --- anno 1500-1599 --- anno 1600-1699 --- anno 1700-1799 --- anno 1900-1999