Simone Weil's Apologetic Use of Literature: Her Christological Interpretation of Classic Greek Texts (Oxford Modern Languages and Literature Monographs) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy Simone Weil's Apologetic Use of Literature: Her Christological Interpretation of Classic Greek Texts (Oxford Modern Languages and Literature Monographs)? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on Simone Weil's Apologetic Use of Literature: Her Christological Interpretation of Classic Greek Texts (Oxford Modern Languages and Literature Monographs). Check out the link below:

>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers

Simone Weil's Apologetic Use of Literature: Her Christological Interpretation of Classic Greek Texts (Oxford Modern Languages and Literature Monographs) ReviewWhile much has been written about the mystical French philosopher, Simone Weil, rarely has she received the quality of critical attention she deserves. With Marie Cabaud Meaney's new study, Weil has found an interpreter worthy of her subject. The daughter of Jacques Cabaud, author of the first and still classic biography of Weil, Cabaud Meaney has written a tour de force: a powerful and convincing account of Weil's controversial "Christological" interpretations of the classics of ancient Greek drama. Where many have maintained that Weil's claim to have discovered "intimations of Christianity among the ancient Greeks" (to reproduce the title of one of her books) strains credulity, Meaney's detailed, nuanced readings of writings spread throughout Weil's oeuvres demonstrate that Weil did indeed succeed in discovering surprising hidden spiritual truths -- which bear a strong resemblance to the Gospels -- in the Greek classics, from Homer to Aeschylus and Sophocles (not to say, Plato).

Meaney brings to bear both an impressive grasp of the vast range of Weil's writings and her own striking critical intelligence to demonstrate, convincingly, that there was an overriding purpose to Weil's accounts of Greek drama, namely, Christian (and more generally, transcendental) apologetics. Writing during the era of WWII when the world was spiraling down into a pit of spiritual disintegration, Weil believed it her duty to point out the road back. Unlike so many of her contemporaries, however, she believed that a merely political response to Hitler and all he represented was bound to fail. For her, the Third Reich represented a spiritual challenge to which only a spiritual response would be adequate.
Yet ethics, alone, for Weil, as a merely humanistic enterprise, offered too little food for the soul -- which would inevitably turn elsewhere for nourishment -- while Christianity, in the course of centuries, if not millennia, had allowed itself to degenerate to the point where it too, unless revitalized, offered little by way of nourishment. What was needed, Weil believed, was a re-invigoration of the transcendence of the spirit that was the true heritage of Christianity -- as it was of all true religion -- and in our anti-theological times, one of the most promising ways to accomplish this task was to show that the spirit found in the Gospels animated also the classics of Greek literature. It was to demonstrate the force of this apologetic enterprise of Weil's that Meaney dedicated her book, and it is a task at which she succeeds brilliantly. Her analysis of Weil's interpretations of the characters of Antigone, Electra, and Prometheus are penetrating, sober and critical, yet faithful to the transcendent dimension so prominent in Weil's thinking. Weil's "supernaturalism", her insistence that the modern spirit of this-worldly-humanism is inadequate to answer the needs of the soul -- has never found a better champion than Marie Cabaud Meaney.Simone Weil's Apologetic Use of Literature: Her Christological Interpretation of Classic Greek Texts (Oxford Modern Languages and Literature Monographs) OverviewMarie Cabaud Meaney looks at Simone Weil's Christological interpretations of the Sophoclean Antigone and Electra, the Iliad and Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound. Apart from her article on the Iliad, Weil's interpretations are not widely known, probably because they are fragmentary and boldly twist the classics, sometimes even contradicting their literal meaning. Meaney argues that Weil had an apologetic purpose in mind: to the spiritual ills of ideology and fanaticism in World War II she wanted to give a spiritual answer, namely the re-Christianization of Europe to which she (though not baptized herself) wished to contribute in some way. To the intellectual agnostics of her day she intended to show through her interpretations that the texts they cherished so much could only be fully understood in light of Christ; to the Catholics she sought to reveal that Catholicism was much more universal than generally believed, since Greek culture already embodied the Christian spirit - perhaps to a greater extent than the Catholic Church ever had. Despite or perhaps because of this apologetic slant, Weil's readings uncover new layers of these familiar texts: Antigone is a Christological figure, combating Creon's ideology of the State by a folly of love that leads her to a Passion in which she experiences an abandonment similar to that of Christ on the Cross. The Iliad depicts a world as yet unredeemed, but which traces objectively the reign of force to which both oppressors and oppressed are subject. Prometheus Boundbecomes the vehicle of her theodicy, in which she shows that suffering only makes sense in light of the Cross. But the pinnacle of the spiritual life is described in Electrawhich, she believes, reflects a mystical experience - something Weil herself had experienced unexpectedly when "Christ himself came down and took her" in November 1938. In order to do justice to Weil's readings, Meaney not only traces her apologetic intentions and explains the manner in which she recasts familiar Christian concepts (thereby letting them come alive - something every good apologist should be able to do), but also situates them among standard approaches used by classicists today, thereby showing that her interpretations truly contribute something new.

Want to learn more information about Simone Weil's Apologetic Use of Literature: Her Christological Interpretation of Classic Greek Texts (Oxford Modern Languages and Literature Monographs)?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now