Sculpture, weaving, and the body in Plato
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Zacharoula Petraki
About this book
Plato’s Timaeus is unique in Greek Antiquity for presenting the creation of the world as the work of a divine demiurge. The maker bestows order on sensible things and imitates the world of the intellect by using the Forms as models. While the creation-myth of the Timaeus seems unparalleled, this book argues that it is not the first of Plato’s dialogues to use artistic language to articulate the relationship of the objects of the material world to the world of the intellect.
The book adopts an interpretative angle that is sensitive to the visual and art-historical developments of Classical Athens to argue that sculpture, revolutionized by the advent of the lost-wax technique for the production of bronze statues, lies at the heart of Plato’s conception of the relation of the human soul and body to the Forms. It shows that, despite the severe criticism of mimēsis in the Republic, Plato’s use of artistic language rests on a positive model of mimēsis.
Plato was in fact engaged in a constructive dialogue with material culture and he found in the technical processes and the cultural semantics of sculpture and of the art of weaving a valuable way to conceptualise and communicate complex ideas about humans’ relation to the Forms.
Author / Editor information
Zacharoula Petraki, University of Crete, Rethymnon, Greece.
Topics
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Frontmatter
I -
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Acknowledgements
VII -
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Contents
IX -
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Chapter One Introduction
1 -
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Chapter Two The Phaedo
27 -
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Chapter Three The Symposium
57 -
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Chapter Four The Republic
106 -
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Chapter Five The Politicus
177 -
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Chapter Six The Laws
224 -
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Epilogue: Resemblance
292 -
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Bibliography
319 -
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Index Locorum
343 -
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Index Rerum
349
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