Plato on poetry
By: edited by Penelope Murray.
Contributors: Murray, Penelope.
Series: Cambridge Greek and Latin classics
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Cambridge; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 250
Subjects: Poetics -- Early works to 1800
Description: Much has been written in recent years on Plato as a critic of literature; but no commentaries have appeared in English on the Ion, or the opening books of the Republic in which Plato launches his attack on poetry, since the early years of this century. This volume brings together these texts and the relevant section of Republic 10.

It aims to provide the reader with a commentary which takes account of modern scholarship on the subject, and which explores the ambivalence of Plato's pronouncements on poetry through an analysis of his own skill as a writer. A general introduction sets Plato's views in the wider context of attitudes to poetry in Greek society before his time, and indicates the main ways in which his writings on poetry have influenced the history of aesthetic thought in European culture.
Notes: Preface, introduction, and commentary in English with text in Greek.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Iōn; title: Platōnos politeia 376e-398b9; title: Platōnos politeia 595-608b10.