Timaeus in Paradise : Metaphors and Beauty from Plato to Dante and Beyond

Tracing the influence and impact of Plato’s Timaeus-and its major themes, creation and beauty-through the centuriesMore than two thousand years after it was written, Plato’s Timaeus continues to fascinate and intrigue its readers.In Timaeus in Paradise, Piero Boitani traces the abiding legacy of the Timaeus, mapping an intellectual journey that begins with Plato and extends to Dante and beyond.In a series of short, lyrical chapters, Boitani sketches a lineage that includes Proclus, Boethius, the Hebrew and Christian Bibles, John Scotus Eriugena and Thomas Aquinas.Focusing on Plato’s metaphorical language-which Dante considered comparable to that of the Bible-and the beauty of its images, Boitani shows that these images penetrate deep into European culture, inspiring the anonymous author of the treatise on the Sublime as well as the mystical writings of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. Plato’s account of the creation of the cosmos in the Timaeus supplants Hesiod’s myths and Parmenides’s