Why Plato? Platonism in Twentieth Century English Literature

If some philosopher or thinker has been very seminal, the spread and development of his ideas never ends, but goes on speaking to later ages. A particular thought can take possession of a particular age because it may have been latent in a sort of half-developed instinct of the human mind itself. This is what has happened to Plato in the twentieth century. The aim of this volume is to demonstrate how, even within the formal and ideological disruptions of the twentieth century, a strong connection with the classical cultural past runs through the whole period. Even if the postmodern age presents an agonistic struggle against tradition, ironising it, deconstructing and parodying it, still the cultural pivots that sustain the whole fabric of the period are deeply rooted in the classical past. If Eliot speaks of the historical sense and of the fragments of tradition that must be shored against the contemporary ruins, these conceptions are the leading factors of the whole twentieth century.