http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-2.xsd
metaphors and beauty from Plato to Dante and beyond
xxiii, 363 pages, 14 unnumbered pages of color plates : color illustrations ; 24 cm
"More than two thousand years after it was written, Plato's Timaeus continues to fascinate and intrigue its readers. In Timaeus in Paradise, Piero Boitani traces the abiding legacy of the Timaeus, mapping an intellectual journey that begins with Plato and extends to Dante and beyond. In a series of short, lyrical chapters, Boitani sketches a lineage that includes Proclus, Boethius, the Hebrew and Christian Bibles, John Scotus Eriugena and Thomas Aquinas. Focusing on Plato's metaphorical language--which Dante considered comparable to that of the Bible--and the beauty of its images, Boitani shows that these images penetrate deep into European culture, inspiring the anonymous author of the treatise on the Sublime as well as the mystical writings of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. Plato's account of the creation of the cosmos in the Timaeus supplants Hesiod's myths and Parmenides's theories--and was described by Johannes Kepler as the best gloss ever on the first chapter of Genesis. Boitani finds its echoes everywhere, from the sculptures of Chartres Cathedral and the frescoes of the Anagni Crypt to the paintings of Raphael and Michelangelo. He connects the beauty defined in the Timaeus to the beauties of the Hebrew Bible and to the lilies of the field invoked by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. Bringing together philosophy, theology, mysticism, poetry, sculpture and painting, Boitani charts Europe's intellectual history--a history of ideas and images--by capturing the enduring reverberations of Plato's summa. Illustrations accompanying the text cover more than two thousand years of iconography" -- from publisher.
One, two, three -- Emulator of Homer -- Pythagorean and Socratic -- Parens, fabricator, artifex : Demogorgon and Phaethon -- Descendants and intermediaries -- Rachel's beauty -- The lilies of the field -- 'Mira profunditas' -- Compunction and transfiguration -- 'O qui perpetua mundum ratione gubernas' -- Beauty -- Metaphorá -- Integumenta; ethétique du Timée -- The three days -- Towards the altitudo terribilis -- The names of God -- Decor, altitudo, gloria -- Philomythía and poetry -- 'I love those who love me' -- 'What Timaeus argues about the souls' -- 'The hall-mark of genius' -- 'We must lose ourselves' -- 'Those things that cannot die and those that can' -- 'To new loves Love Eternal opened out' -- 'That deep mind' -- 'Amor quo caelum regitur' -- He laughed, self-mockingly' -- This reason moved Augustine' -- 'Fountain of light, seedbed of life' -- 'Beings and accidents and modes of life' -- The moon smiles among the eternal nymphs -- 'Splendour of God!' -- 'The beauty I saw' -- Neptune and lethargy -- The last simile : the geometer -- Epilogue : descent from Heaven, ascent to art and science -- Afterword : the unmoved mover begins to move : literary and visual renderings of the Christian Bible.
Piero Boitani ; translated by Jane Wilkinson.
Includes bibliographical references and index.