What is poetry? Why do human beings produce and consume it? What effects does it have on them? Can it give them insight into truth, or is it dangerously misleading? This book is a wide-ranging study of the very varied answers which ancient philosophers gave to such questions. An extended discussion of Plato's Republic shows how the two discussions of poetry are integrated with each other and with the dialogue's central themes. Aristotle's Poetics is read in the context of his understanding...

“Who the Holy Spirit is determines what the Holy Spirit does.Who is the Holy Spirit? aims to help people see who the Holy Spirit is through Scripture’s description of him, offering biblical insights into the identity of the third person of the Trinity. With consideration for the Spirit’s identity derived from both Old and New Testament accounts, author Malcolm B. Yarnell focuses on identifying characteristics of the person of the Holy Spirit himself, rath...

The first translation, produced by a team of eight scholars, of the Declamations and Preliminary Talks of the sixth-century sophist Choricius of Gaza. Declamations, deliberative or judicial orations on fictitious themes, were the fundamental advanced exercises of the rhetorical schools of the Roman Empire, of interest also to audiences outside the schools. Some of Choricius' declamations are on generic themes (e.g. a tyrannicide, a war-hero), while others are based on specific motifs from ...

This volume integrates aspects of the Poetics into the broader corpus of Aristotelian philosophy. It both deals with some old problems raised by the treatise, suggesting possible solutions through contextualization, and also identifies new ways in which poetic concepts could relate to Aristotelian philosophy.In the past, contextualization has most commonly been used by scholars in order to try to solve the meaning of difficult concepts in the Poetics (such as ...