The City and the Stage: Performance, Genre, and Gender in Plato’s Laws by Marcus Folch (review)

While investigating Plato’s program of laws (nomoi), Folch also provides a nuanced interpretation of Plato’s attitude towards contemporary Athenian performance culture (and its musical nomoi): for Folch, Plato’s critique is not so much a straightforward rejection of Athenian theatrocracy as a revisi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Classical World 2018, Vol.111 (2), p.268-269
Main Author: Leven, Pauline A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Attitudes
Dialogue
Gender
Genre
Nonfiction
Performance (Arts)
Philosophy
Plato (427-347 BC)
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:While investigating Plato’s program of laws (nomoi), Folch also provides a nuanced interpretation of Plato’s attitude towards contemporary Athenian performance culture (and its musical nomoi): for Folch, Plato’s critique is not so much a straightforward rejection of Athenian theatrocracy as a revision of some of its tenets in the light of moral philosophy.Ultimately, this manifold quality works at the level of the text: the Laws constitutes a hybrid of the various poetic traditions it discusses, while offering, Folch argues, a model for its own interpretation and aesthetic reception.An ungenerous reading of Folch’s book would see it as an obsessive return to one aspect of Laws, mousikê, to the exclusion of other equally important topics (such as the soul or virtue).
ISSN:0009-8418
1558-9234
1558-9234
DOI:10.1353/clw.2018.0006