TY  - JOUR
A1  - Kambo, Kevin
ED  - Ambühl, Annemarie
ED  - Carlà-Uhink, Filippo
ED  - Rollinger, Christian
ED  - Walde, Christine
T1  - Platonic Tripartition and the Peoples of Middle-Earth
JF  - thersites 15
N2  - Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings employ traditional races from fairy tales: elves, men and dwarves.  These peoples are differentiated principally by their dominant desires, but also by their speech, diet, and realms.  I argue that these three races are significantly inspired by the three aspects that characterize the Republic’s tripartite soul—logistikon, thumoeides, and epithumetikon—along with their respective principal desires: desire for truth, greatness, and material goods.  For Tolkien, therefore, these races have a corporate or political psychology that explains who they are as peoples in the history of Middle-earth.  I offer a comprehensive view of the major races, connecting the dwarves with the appetitive artisans of the Republic, humans with the honour- and glory-seeking auxiliaries, and elves with the ruling guardians.  This treatment explains the artisanal dwarves, as well as the battle-loving men (and women) of Rohan and Gondor, and the nostalgic, ‘anamnetic’ condition of exile that distinguishes the elves.  Indeed, the condition of elves in many descriptions recalls a Platonic philosopher returned to the Cave, as well as the Neo-Platonic sagacity pictured in the biographies of Plotinus and Proclus.
KW  - Plato
KW  - Tolkien
KW  - republic
KW  - Tripartite
KW  - race
Y1  - 2022
U6  - https://doi.org/10.34679/thersites.vol15.219
SN  - 2364-7612
VL  - 2022
IS  - 15
SP  - 90
EP  - 122
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Gärtner, Ursula
T1  - nempe exemplis discimus
BT  - tradition and example in Phaedrus (3.9)
JF  - Antike Erzähl- und Deutungsmuster : Zwischen Exemplarität und Transformation
N2  - ‘Tradition’ and ‘example’ are key concepts of the ancient fable. The fable has not only developed a literary tradition of its own, but from the beginning, it was also used as a rhetorical device, the exemplum. A diachronic overview of the genre and especially the use of the fable as exemplum reveals that Phaedrus adapts these terms in a new and ingenious way. In a case study of fable 3.9 this paper demonstrates how the fable finds its place in the literary tradition of the motif, how Socrates is presented as a model for the poet’s persona and how an intricate network of inter- and intratextual references is established between Socrates, Aesop, Phaedrus, and his potential successors. The subtle irony of the poet is particularly evident in the gradual development of the poet’s persona into a caricature, but the message of the fable itself remains unaffected: the value of true friendship.
KW  - Poetic criticism
KW  - literary tradition
KW  - poet-persona
KW  - fiction and reality
KW  - reader expectations
KW  - friendship
KW  - human behaviour
KW  - rhetorical exemplum
KW  - promythion
KW  - epimythion
KW  - memoria
KW  - mos
KW  - Aesop
KW  - Socrates
KW  - Plato
Y1  - 2018
SN  - 978-3-11-061251-6
SN  - 978-3-11-061011-6
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110612516-022
SN  - 1616-0452
VL  - 374
SP  - 455
EP  - 472
PB  - De Gruyter
CY  - Berlin
ER  -