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E491: History of Literary Criticism Plotinus Study Questions Al Drake | 520 Hum. M/W 12:00-1:00 | ajdrake@ajdrake.com "On the Intellectual Beauty" (Fifth Ennead, Eighth Treatise) (circa 300-05) 1. On 174, what does Plotinus set forth as the purpose of his treatise? 2. On 174-76, how much of a role does Plotinus grant to individual artists in creating art? How does he compare works of art to beautiful objects in nature? 3. On 177-79 and 184-85, what view does Plotinus advance concerning the gods? How does this view compare with those of Plato's Socrates in The Republic selections we have read, or with Greek mythology more generally? 4. What significance does Plotinus attach to the term "image"? See, for example, 179ff: "we cannot, therefore...". 5. On 180-81, and then 184-85, how does Plotinus defend the "visible sphere" or earthly realm from charges leveled against it by Plato and others? 6. On 181, what seems to be the purpose of Plotinus' suggestion that his readers "make a mental picture of our universe," etc? What should we achieve thereby? 8. On 183 bottom, Plotinus writes that "we are most completely aware of ourselves when we are most completely identified with the object of our knowledge." How do you interpret this statement? How might you relate what Plotinus says here to encounters with art? 9. General question: to what extent would Plotinus be likely to interest himself in the formal study of art, or in the craft of making poetry and artistic objects? 10. General question: if you were to ask Plotinus what artistic experience does for us, what do you conjecture that his response might be? Edition: The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: Norton, 2001. ISBN: 0393974294.
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