Ancient Religious Texts and Intertextuality:Plato's and Plutarch's Myths of the Afterlife

Up to not so long ago texts were approached with rather rigid traditional literary methods in which the author, text, and reader were envisaged in a fixed and unidirectional chronological sequence. In their quest for meaning readers were constrained by the notions of originality, uniqueness, singularity and autonomy of both author and text. A good example of this approach is the historical methods applied to the study of ancient religious texts, the primary goal of which is to try to understand as closely as possible the author's original meaning and their intended audience or readership.