Paideia at Play

Download or read book Paideia at Play written by Werner Riess and published by Barkhuis. This book was released on 2008 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paidea, the yearning for, and display of knowledge, reached its height as a cultural concept in the works of the Second Sophistic, an elite literary and philosophical movement seeking to ape the style and achievements of the 5th and 4th centuries BC. A crucial element in the display of paidea was an ability to mix the witty and playful with the serious and instructive. The Second Sophistic is known as a Greek phenomenon, but these essays ask how the Latin author Apuleius fitted into this framework, and created a distinctively latin expression of paidea, focusing on the elements of playfulness at its heart.