The gatekeeper : narrative voice in Plato's dialogues / by Margalit Finkelberg.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Finkelberg, Margalit, author.

Series:

Brill's Plato Studies Series 2.

Brill's Plato studies series, 2452-2945 ; volume 2

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Discourse analysis, Narrative.

Plato. Dialogues.

Plato.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (200 pages).

Place of Publication:

Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2019.

Summary:

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 such topics as narrative levels, focalization, narrative frame, and metalepsis. The main conclusion of the book is that in Plato the plurality of the speakers’ opinions is not accompanied by a plurality of points of view. Only one perspective is available, that of the narrator. Contrary to the widespread view, Plato’s dialogues cannot be considered multivocal, or “dialogic” in Bakhtin’s sense. By skillful use of narrative voice, Plato unobtrusively regulates the readers’ reception and response. The narrator is the dialogue’s gatekeeper, a filter whose main function is to control how the dialogue is received by the reader by sustaining a certain perspective of it.

Contents:

Front Matter

Copyright

Dedication

Preface

Abbreviations

Introduction

The Dialogues

The Explicit Narrator: Narrated Dialogues

The Implicit Narrator: Dramatic Dialogues

The Explicit and the Implicit Narrator Combined: Mixed Dialogues

The Interpretation

Plato’s Experiments with Narrative Voice

The Limits of Authority

The Narrator and the Author

Back Matter

Bibliography.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [169]-178) and indexes.

Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

ISBN:

90-04-39002-2

Publisher Number:

10.1163/9789004390027 DOI