For many millenia and across the whole Old World, from Eastern to Western Eurasia, and fro the ti... more For many millenia and across the whole Old World, from Eastern to Western Eurasia, and fro the tip of Southern Africa to the highlands of Britannia, people were in the habit of practicing divination, or the art of translating information from their gods into the realm of human knowledge. On a scale whose breadth we have yet to fully appreciate, they assumed clandestine signs were continuously being revealed through the natural world and its creatures (including their own bodies, asleep or awake). They received messages from temple-based oracles, as well as in their dreams, from the entrails of the animals they killed, from lightning, fire, lots, pebbles, livers, fired tortoise shells, the stars, birds, the wind, and nearly anything else that moved.1 These practices were not, for the most part, considered esoteric or marginal. The inclinations of the divine, like the weather, were simply a part of the ancient atmosphere, and just about wherever we look in the sources, we find people ...
In this wide-ranging book, first published in German and French in 1996, Luc Brisson aims to cove... more In this wide-ranging book, first published in German and French in 1996, Luc Brisson aims to cover two millennia of thinking on allegory in barely 160 pages. The result is a compressed overview with moments of great insight. Its strengths lie in the details Brisson is able to work into this brief treatment; its weakness lies in Brisson\u27s failure to justify the system into which he arranges the whole
This chapter summarizes key themes and presents some final thoughts. The account in this book has... more This chapter summarizes key themes and presents some final thoughts. The account in this book has been of philosophical schools trying to make sense of a puzzling phenomenon. As is always the case in looking at an intellectual history from this perspective, one may rightly raise the question of whether it has pertinence outside these rarified circles. Do the perspectives apparent in those texts allow us to gain new insights in other domains of culture? The remainder of the chapter offers a slightly closer look at a case study which provides an example for the kinds of insights that may be available. The vantage provided here gives new purchase on the divine signs in the culminating books of Homer's Odyssey, which are sending us a slightly richer message about Penelope than we have yet fully appreciated.
For many millenia and across the whole Old World, from Eastern to Western Eurasia, and fro the ti... more For many millenia and across the whole Old World, from Eastern to Western Eurasia, and fro the tip of Southern Africa to the highlands of Britannia, people were in the habit of practicing divination, or the art of translating information from their gods into the realm of human knowledge. On a scale whose breadth we have yet to fully appreciate, they assumed clandestine signs were continuously being revealed through the natural world and its creatures (including their own bodies, asleep or awake). They received messages from temple-based oracles, as well as in their dreams, from the entrails of the animals they killed, from lightning, fire, lots, pebbles, livers, fired tortoise shells, the stars, birds, the wind, and nearly anything else that moved.1 These practices were not, for the most part, considered esoteric or marginal. The inclinations of the divine, like the weather, were simply a part of the ancient atmosphere, and just about wherever we look in the sources, we find people ...
In this wide-ranging book, first published in German and French in 1996, Luc Brisson aims to cove... more In this wide-ranging book, first published in German and French in 1996, Luc Brisson aims to cover two millennia of thinking on allegory in barely 160 pages. The result is a compressed overview with moments of great insight. Its strengths lie in the details Brisson is able to work into this brief treatment; its weakness lies in Brisson\u27s failure to justify the system into which he arranges the whole
This chapter summarizes key themes and presents some final thoughts. The account in this book has... more This chapter summarizes key themes and presents some final thoughts. The account in this book has been of philosophical schools trying to make sense of a puzzling phenomenon. As is always the case in looking at an intellectual history from this perspective, one may rightly raise the question of whether it has pertinence outside these rarified circles. Do the perspectives apparent in those texts allow us to gain new insights in other domains of culture? The remainder of the chapter offers a slightly closer look at a case study which provides an example for the kinds of insights that may be available. The vantage provided here gives new purchase on the divine signs in the culminating books of Homer's Odyssey, which are sending us a slightly richer message about Penelope than we have yet fully appreciated.
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