The Gatekeeper: Narrative Voice in Plato's Dialogues

Description

In The Gatekeeper: Narrative Voice in Plato’s Dialogues Margalit Finkelberg offers the first narratological analysis of all of Plato’s transmitted dialogues. The book explores the dialogues as works of literary fiction, giving special emphasis to the issue of narrative perspective. The Gatekeeper: Narrative Voice in Plato’s Dialogues Copyright Dedication Contents Preface Abbreviations 1 Introduction 1 “Diegesis through mimesis”: Classification of Narrative Genres in Republic 3 2 The Theaetetus Passage 3 Plato as Literary Author 4 Narrative Voice in Plato’s Dialogues 5 Plato’s Narrator and Narrative Theory: Some Necessary Adjustments Part 1: The Dialogues 2 The Explicit Narrator: Narrated Dialogues 1 Introducing the Narrated Dialogues 2 A Single Narrator (the Charmides, Lysis, Republic) 3 Multiple Narrators (the Parmenides) 4 Conclusions 3 The Implicit Narrator: Dramatic Dialogues 1 Introducing the Dramatic Dialogues 2 The Theaetetus as a Test Case 3 Bifocality or a Single Focus of Perception? (the Euthyphro, Crito, Menexenus vs. the Ion and Hippias Maior) 4 An Implicit Narrator-Hero (the Cratylus, Meno, Phaedrus, Laws) 5 An Implicit Narrator-Observer (the Hippias Minor, Laches, Gorgias, Philebus) 6 Socrates as an Implicit Narrator-Observer (the Sophist, Statesman, Timaeus, Critias) 7 Conclusions 4 The Explicit and the Implicit Narrator Combined: Mixed Dialogues 1 Introducing the Mixed Dialogues 2 The Protagoras 3 The Euthydemus 4 The Phaedo 5 The Symposium 6 The Theaetetus 7 Conclusions Part 2: The Interpretation 5 Plato’s Experiments with Narrative Voice 1 Preliminary Remarks 2 A Single Focus of Perception 3 Multiple Narrative Levels 4 Abandonment of the Narrated Form 5 Conclusions 6 The Limits of Authority 1 Preliminary Remarks 2 The Narrator’s Text 3 Change of Interlocutor 4 Metanarrative Comments 5 Distribution and Clustering: Three Case Studies 6 Conclusions 7 The Narrator and the Author 1 Poetry and Painting in Republic 10 2 The Body of the Dialogue 3 The Gardens of Adonis 4 Mimesis and Reality 5 Representation of Narration 6 Conclusions Bibliography Index of Passages Cited General Index