During Derrida's stay at the University of Oxford, he visited the Bodleian Library, the main research library of the University of Oxford. There he saw a postcard illustrated with a mechanical reproduction of a 12th century image of Socrates and Plato. The image consumes Derrida, for Socrates is portrayed as the seated scribe while Plato is shown dictating behind him.
|The Bodleian Library is the main research library of the University of Oxford used by scholars from around the world. Currently a number of their collections of medieval manuscripts are on-line. At the top is an image of St. Bernard writing. We see him again with Dante in The third image of the second row.The second row of images are from a northern Italian 14th century illustration of Dante's Divine Comedy. The illuminations of Dante's Divine Commedia condemned and condoned according to the political and ideological moment. In the Inferno, Dante and Virgil observe Mohammad (left), the Seal of the Prophets to Moslems and Ptolomy (center), the Greek geographer whose book Geography, 150 BC compiled three centuries of Greek knowledge. In 391 AD Christians mobs sacked the Alexandrian library including Ptolemy's research was not utilized by Christian scholars and mapmakers research was lost until 1400 AD 391AD - 1400AD Arab scholars archive and use Ptolemy's research. Ptolemy science would not be used by Christian scholars until c 1400 but it was used by Islamic scholars. In 1154 Al-Idrisi: Arab-(Islamic?) geographer in a Sicilian court created a world map influenced by Ptolemy.|
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