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Plato The Poet, Francis James Flanagan
Plato The Poet, Francis James Flanagan
Honors Bachelor of Arts
Plato’s dialogue genre contains within it literary elements not normally associated with a philosophical work. In the creation of his dialogue, Plato combined the literary aspects of drama—specifically setting and characterization—and rhetoric with the Socratic Method to create a genre that was new to philosophy. An examination of the usage of these elements in a Platonic dialogue, specifically Symposium, in comparison to Xenophon’s Symposium reveals the unique nature of Plato’s dialogue.