Plato and Platonism: A Series of Lectures

PATER, Walter

Published by MacMillan and Co, New York, 1893

About this Item

First American Edition. 12mo. Maroon fabric with embossed bands to covers. Gilt lettering to spine. Former owner signature to front endpage. Walter Horatio Pater(4 August 1839 ? 30 July 1894) was an English essayist, literary and art critic, and fiction writer, regarded as one of the great stylists. His works on Renaissance subjects were popular but controversial, reflecting his lost belief in Christianity. In 1893 Pater and his sisters returned to Oxford (64 St Giles). He was now in demand as a lecturer. In this year appeared his bookPlato and Platonism. Here and in other essays on ancient Greece Pater relates to Greek culture the romanticism-classicism dialectic which he had first explored in his essay 'Romanticism' (1876), reprinted as the 'Postscript' toAppreciations. All through Greek history, he writes, we may trace, in every sphere of activity of the Greek mind, the action of these two opposing tendencies, the centrifugal and centripetal. The centrifugal ? the Ionian, the Asiatic tendency ? flying from the centre, throwing itself forth in endless play of imagination, delighting in brightness and colour, in beautiful material, in changeful form everywhere, its restless versatility driving it towards the development of the individual: and the centripetal tendency, drawing towards the centre, maintaining the Dorian influence of a severe simplification everywhere, in society, in culture. Good. Soiling to back cover. Sunning to spine with rubbing to spine head and tail. Foxing, sunning, and some staining to textblock. Binding tight. Seller Inventory # 32245

Bibliographic Details

Title: Plato and Platonism: A Series of Lectures

Publisher: MacMillan and Co, New York

Publication Date: 1893

Binding: Hardcover