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Aristotle's Critique Of Mimesis: The Romantic Prelude, Terryl Givens

English Faculty Publications

The most notable element of Plato's theory of art, or at least the most memorable, is his censorship of poetry from the ideal state (Republic III: 398; X: 607). However Plato's argument is construed, it is enlightening to note the domestication to which it is invariably subjected. Since Aristotle's theory is eminently more amenable to our contemporary appreciation for art, and, in one form or another, is judged more central to the history of Western literature, Plato's attack is dispensed with after due characterization as ironic, unmanageably ambiguous, valid only in a most limited context, or excusable in the light …