Here is a table of contents for this final reading of our group:
THE PROLOGUE OF THE NONNE PRESTES TALE.
EPILOGUE TO THE NONNE PREESTES TALE.
The angel seyde, ‘god lyketh thy requeste,
And bothe, with the palm of martirdom,
Ye shullen come unto his blisful feste.’
The palm of martirdom for to receyve,
Seinte Cecile, fulfild of goddes yifte,
The world and eek hir chambre gan she weyve.
Our fourth scheduled reading in the Republic is Book III, Stephanus pages 386–417. Socrates continues to direct the construction of the fantastic city. Plato’s brothers, faithful as dogs, agree to two infamous proposals:
The deportation from the city of any poet “who is able by wisdom to become every sort of thing and to imitate all things” (δυνάμενον ὑπὸ σοφίας παντοδαπὸν γίγνεσθαι καὶ μιμεῖσθαι πάντα χρήματα, 398a).
The teaching of the Noble Lie, that the citizens were formed under ground and distinguished, according to class, with admixture of
Later in this post, I shall try to analyze the reading into sections; but a serial summary of these seems tedious, and I shall focus on a few remarkable points, such as the ones above.
Two dogs with my copy of
Allan Bloom (translator), The Republic of Plato, 2016 edition,
on the beach at
Profesörler Sitesi, Altınova, Balıkesir, Turkey
September 8, 2021
I shall be quoting
We are reading now Book II of Plato’s Republic, Stephanus pages 357–83, covering:
Dog with copy of Alain Badiou, Plato’s Republic:
A Dialogue in Sixteen Chapters, with a Prologue and an Epilogue, 2012
Profesörler Sitesi, Altınova, Balıkesir, Turkey, September 2, 2021
In the selection from the Canterbury Tales taken up here,
Andrea Mantegna or Follower (Possibly Giulio Campagnola)
Judith with the Head of Holofernes, c. 1495/1500
Widener Collection
National Gallery of Art, Washington
In some nominal sense at least, the tales of the Prioress and the Monk have a common theme, Judaism; they also have a common character, Satan.
Constituting the latter part of Book I, the second of the Republic readings features the only sustained contribution of Thrasymachus, who argues that, if it can be pursued perfectly, injustice is superior to justice.
According to my electronic search of Jowett’s translation, confirmed with a search of Bloom’s, Socrates will mention Thrasymachus and his argument in Books II, VI, VIII, and IX, but the man himself will speak again only near the beginning of Book V, to agree with the demand of Polemarchus, Adeimantus, and Glaucon that Socrates explain the community of women and children in the imaginary city that Socrates will have been describing.
Remarkable teachings from the Franklin, who says he never learned rhetoric, nor read Cicero:
Pacience is an heigh vertu certeyn;
For it venquisseth, as thise clerkes seyn,
Thinges that rigour sholde never atteyne.Patience is a high virtue certain;
For it vanquisheth, as these clerks say,
Things that rigor should never attain.
There are things that you cannot win by force. Love is one, and that is the Franklin’s theme.
You can’t hurry love
No you just have to wait
Respect is another thing that you cannot win by force. I took up that theme in considering Collingwood on “Civilization as Education” (September, 2018). Confusion here may explain the problem of bad leadership that Socrates takes up in the Republic – which I have now taken up in a new series.
Rembrandt van Rijn
Lucretia, 1664
Andrew W. Mellon Collection
National Gallery of Art, Washington
After the Pensées of Pascal and the Canterbury Tales of Chaucer, here begins another series on readings of a classic, now the Republic of Plato. The sections (after this one) of the present post are
“Highlighting In Used Copy Of Plato’s Republic Stops On Page 17”
The Onion, March 24, 1999
In this reading:
The Friar tells a tale about a summoner, who becomes sworn brother to another man. The man turns out to be a devil, but it hardly matters to the summoner, he being more lawless than the devil, who himself takes only what is rightfully his, including the summoner.
We are skipping the Summoner’s own tale.
The Clerk tells a tale of a common woman with a preternatural patience for the abuse of her noble husband, who (she thinks) has her children put to death and will take another wife. Chaucer makes disclaimers, both as the Clerk and as himself. The Clerk refers explicitly to the Epistle of James, who writes in Chapter 1,
2 My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations;
3 Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.
4 But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.
Griselda follows, as it were, the teachings of Epictetus, here in Chapter XI of the Encheiridion (translation of George Long):
Never say about any thing, I have lost it, but say I have restored it. Is your child dead ? It has been restored. Is your wife dead ? She has been restored. Has your estate been taken from you ? Has not then this also been restored? But he who has taken it from me is a bad man. But what is it to you, by whose hands the giver demanded it back ? So long as he may allow you, take care of it as a thing which belongs to another, as travellers do with their inn.
This is about an essay called “Agency in the Anthropocene: How much choice do you actually have?” (Daily Philosophy, August 4, 2021). I fall in the gap in age between the author and Jeff Bezos, who (the author says) is three years her senior.
The Wife of Bath: the type of the difficult woman? She is the opposite or complement of Constance in the Man of Law’s Tale. About to be sent to a barbarous country to wed a man she has never met, Constance laments,
Women are born to thraldom and penance,
And to be under man’s governance.
In her Prologue (which is longer than her Tale), the Wife says of her first three husbands, who were “gode, and riche, and olde” (line 197),
I governed hem so wel, after my lawe,
That ech of hem ful blisful was and fawe
To bringe me gaye thinges fro the fayre. (lines 219–21)
After the fight with her fifth husband in which he deafened her ear,
He yaf me al the brydel in myn hond
To han the governance of hous and lond,
And of his tonge and of his hond also,
And made him brenne his book anon right tho. (line 813–6)
The book was all about “wikked wyves.”
Polytropy 