English: The School of Athens (detail). Fresco, Stanza della Segnatura, Palazzi Pontifici, Vatican. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Yesterday, I was working on chapter 4 of my book. This chapter deals with mimesis and mimetic studies in the Gospel of Mark. Specifically, I am using Dennis MacDonald, Thomas L. Brodie, and Adam Winn. My beef with MacDonald is first and foremost his understanding of mimesis which is shaded only by Stephen Hinds. Hinds should have listened to Roger F. Thomas more. Anyway, Hinds argues that allusions aren’t easily seen or known by the audience.
Other new literary critics argue that authorial intent is not to be looked for.
So, allusions are sometimes just accident artifacts of the author.
My point in that portion of the chapter was to show that allusions are purposeful, and if purposeful, we can use them to look for authorial intent.
Then, the unthinkable happened. I was editing.
I edited myself into an accidental allusion to Plato’s Cave. The allusion to Plato’s Cave works because we are looking for a way out of the prison of forced interpretation, seeing things that aren’t there, and missing things that are.
So now… I don’t know what to do. I didn’t mean for the allusion to appear, but it did. Then, when it did, I realized that it worked really well. So now, I am keeping it. On purpose.
odd…
Related articles
- Elude allude or illude? Elusive, allusive or illusive? (libroediting.com)
- Mark’s (Unclean) Bartimaeus and Plato’s (Honoured) Timaeus (vridar.wordpress.com)
- Plato’s Cave (lvv4ublyth.wordpress.com)
Joel L. Watts holds a Masters of Arts from United Theological Seminary with a focus in literary and rhetorical criticism of the New Testament. His interests include exploring the role of mimesis in human civilization, specifically in the study of religion and media, as well as science fiction and the way in which it has allowed mythology to be explored in light of scientific discoveries of the past century. He is the author of Mimetic Criticism of the Gospel of Mark: Introduction and Commentary (Wipf and Stock, 2013) and a co-editor and contributor to From Fear to Faith: Stories of Hitting Spiritual Walls (Energion, 2013).
Website: → Unsettled Christianity
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