INTRODUCTION

In the previous chapter I examined issues that bear on the demarcation of a realm of myth. I outlined how usage of the word mythos, at first associated with authoritative speech, was transformed: gradually, it became connected with the traditional tales (myths) that were the vehicles of authoritative social conventions. The first philosophers attempted to appropriate this authority for their own intellectual project, whose product, they hoped, would displace traditional sources of wisdom. The textualisation of these sources in the wake of increasing literacy enabled philosophers to develop a methodological self-consciousness in the rejection of poetic multiplicity. They explored a new source for discursive authority, one which contrasted with Muse-based inspiration in its appeal to argument. An important aspect of textualising, demarcating, and excluding the poets was the concern that poetic predecessors had misused language. I suggested that this concern may have led to worries about the contingency of language. We may now proceed to a more detailed investigation of the nature of the gesture by which certain Presocratics reject the world of poetic mythologising. This chapter will focus on the challenge offered by Xenophanes, Herakleitos, Empedokles, and Parmenides to poetic thought and language, and, more briefly, on the response to this challenge. Parmenides' poem on Being will receive the lengthiest treatment, since it both critiques ordinary thought and language, and sets this critique in a framework. It is therefore well suited to dramatise the tensions and possibilities of mythology and philosophy.