Plato's Symposium

Plato's Symposium tells of a dinner party at a crucial seminal text, not just for the representation of Socrates, but for Athenian social and political history, the history of rhetoric, and for the image of the intellectual in Western tradition. It is also a high point in classical literary art. This book pays close attention to parody of modes of style and thought as well as to the provocative construction of the whole. It will introduce readers to the work itself by contextualizing it in Greek literature in general and the Platonic corpus in particular, and, with necessary brevity, to the main outlines of its reception and influence.