CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2008
| Author | Manolova, Divna Valerieva |
|---|---|
| Title | Sophonias the Philosopher. A preface of an Aristotelian commentary: structure, intention, and audience |
| Summary | At the end of the thirteenth century Sophonias the Philosopher wrote a paraphrasis of Aristotle’s treatise De Anima [On the Soul]. This exegetical work is accompanied by a methodological preface which presents a discussion on the approaches of previous commentators followed by a description of Sophonias’ own method. This preface and its various aspects constitute the core of this study. Sophonias’ preface to his paraphrasis of De Anima is approached from two main perspectives in the course of the present study. First, it is contextualized within three textual frameworks: the genre of commentary (and more specifically the Aristotelian commentary), Sophonias’ other prefaces, and the text of the De Anima Paraphrasis. Second, the preface is analyzed in comparison with two other prefaces to commentaries on De Anima: Themistius’ and Thomas Aquinas’. Additionally, the first chapter of the inquiry offers a prosopographical reconstruction of Sophonias’ activities in order to complement the contextual analysis of the preface. As a result of the analysis described above, I argue that the most probable reason for the composition of Sophonias’ paraphrasis is that it was meant to serve educational purposes, that is, to introduce certain apprentice(s) to Aristotle’s theory on the soul. That is to say, Sophonias developed a method different from that of the exegetes and the paraphrasts in order to deliver the subject matter in a more efficient way. |
| Supervisor | Geréby, György ; Gaul, Niels |
| Department | Medieval Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2008/manolova_divna.pdf |
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