Ebook: How Philosophers Saved Myths: Allegorical Interpretation and Classical Mythology

Contents; Translator's Note; Preface to the French Edition; List of Abbreviations; Introduction; One: Muthos and Philosophia; Two: Plato's Attitude toward Myth; Three: Aristotle and the Beginnings of Allegorical Exegesis; Four: Stoics, Epicureans, and the New Academy; Five: Pythagoreanism and Platonism; Six: The Neoplatonic School of Athens; Seven: Byzantium and the Pagan Myths; Eight: The Western Middle Ages; Nine: The Renaissance; Conclusion; Notes; Index.;This study explains how the myths of Greece and Rome were transmitted from antiquity to the Renaissance. Luc Brisson argues that philosophy was ironically responsible for saving myth from historical annihilation. Although philosophy was initially critical of myth because it could not be declared true or false and because it was inferior to argumentation, mythology was progressively reincorporated into philosophy through allegorical exegesis. Brisson shows to what degree allegory was employed among philosophers and how it enabled myth to take on a number of different interpretive systems throug.