17.165 nesting and linear narratives

From: Humanist Discussion Group (by way of Willard McCarty willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk)
Date: Mon Jul 28 2003 - 01:43:38 EDT

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                   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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