HELLENIC STUDIES SERIES
Cover: Criteria of Truth: Representations of Truth and Falsehood in Hellenistic Poetry, from Harvard University PressCover: Criteria of Truth in PAPERBACK

Hellenic Studies Series 100

Criteria of Truth

Representations of Truth and Falsehood in Hellenistic Poetry

Product Details

PAPERBACK

$24.95 • £21.95 • €22.95

ISBN 9780674292420

Publication Date: 05/30/2023

Text

276 pages

6 x 9 inches

2 illus.

Center for Hellenic Studies > Hellenic Studies Series

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Amidst conflicting information and personal experiences, how can someone distinguish between truth and falsehood? Criteria of Truth: Representations of Truth and Falsehood in Hellenistic Poetry tackles this fundamental question through a study of five Hellenistic poems dated to the third and second centuries BCE: Aratus’s Phaenomena, Nicander’s Theriaca, Callimachus’s Aetia, Apollonius of Rhodes’s Argonautica, and Lycophron’s Alexandra.

Situating these poetic works in their intellectual and literary milieu, Kathleen Kidder applies the philosophic concept of the criterion of truth, arguing that each poetic persona represents a different criterion for interrogating truth and falsehood. Moreover, by analyzing the poems’ allusions, myths, and poetic language, Kidder demonstrates how this poetry can encapsulate the tensions not only between truth and falsehood, but also between order and chaos, certainty and doubt, clarity and obscurity, seen and unseen, and being and seeming.

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