Platonic Psychology: David Schaps

Showing posts with label David Schaps. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Appeitive/Reasoning: The Elusive Oxford "Reds"

I guess I'm really becoming one of those classical geeks.

Ever since I did some of the original reading from David Schaps' Handbook for Classical Research, I have been hunting the local university library for the "Oxford Reds." According to Schaps, "the “Oxford Reds,” a number of works (never officially a series) [were] published by Oxford University Press from the 1930s until the 1980s, offering an introduction and a detailed commentary that were on quite a respectable scholarly level: some of these editions, indeed, became the scholarly standard for decades. The text used was usually that of the OCT, occasionally with minor deviations" (Schaps 110). I am glad to say I finally found one. I need to practice my dactylic hexameter scansion with Virgil, so I checked out what I believe is the "Oxford Red" of Book II of the Aeneid. It has a detailed commentary. Should be fun. I might actually translate some of it.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Appetitive/Reasoning: Reviews and Things to Come

I've got a cold so I have not been as productive as I might have been. I am still in the process of working on some of my arguments on Plato which should appear at the end of the week sometime. The first one will be trying to dispute the conception of Socrates (the character) as a mouthpiece for Plato's philosophy. I also should be posting some Catullus and maybe some Horace.

In the meantime, I have written a review (thus far) of the a new book that just came out: David Schaps' Handbook for Classical Research. It is on Fragments of Sulpicia.

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Why Platonic Psychology?

Entry types into this blog are divided into three categories: appetitive, spirited, and reasoning to correspond with the three parts of the Platonic conception of the soul. The appetitive portion will most often be humorous content with a classical bent. However, Plato's understanding of appetitive is much broader than that, encompassing the general pleasures of spectacle-- such as theater, both comedy and tragedy-- as well as emotions and bodily pains and pleasures. Sometimes I will stray into one of the more Platonic uses of appetitive. If I can manage it, I will post a weekly translation of a joke or funny phrase into Latin or Greek. The spirited portion (literally timophillic i.e. honor loving) will be my own ideas about Greek and Roman ideas. This section attempts to put me on the map as a classicist with a point of view. The reasoning part will be commentary and reviews on classical texts. I will also try to post a passage for Latin or Greek prose composition, as well as translations of prose passages or poetry in Latin or Greek. I will offer my take on the passage, and if anyone would like to offer their own attempt at the passage, or corrections or criticisms of mine, they will be welcome to do so in a comment on the blogpost or email me at sulpicia3@hotmail.com.

Bread, Roman Poetry, and Other Frivolity

If you're interested in me as well as my commentary about classical texts, visit my personal blog Fragments of Sulpicia (III), in which I discuss my general day-to-day existence, alongside bread recipes, pedagogy, and Roman Love Elegy.

The Roman love elegists, writing at the end of the Roman Republic wrote beautiful poems about their experiences in love, creating the persona or changing the name of a real person on whom to center their poetry. The only extant female poet calls herself Sulpicia, daughter of Servius and constructs her poems around her lover, Cerninthus. In order to write freely, I have taken up her name, Sulpicia, and the names of her characters and the characters of her contemporary love elegists, to refer to people in my own life. A reference list of characters can be found on the righthand side of Fragments of Sulpicia (III).