Plato and his Dual Theories on Poetry

Although the existence of literature in many ancient societies dates back to prehistoric times, the origin of literary criticism as a knowledge that analyzes the nature of poetry and literature is undoubtedly rooted in ancient Greece, and Plato is one of the forerunners of this undeniable art. His theories on poetry can be divided into two parts: intuitive and imitative. In his intuitive theory, he considers poetry to be an unconscious inspiration and intuition from the gods of poetry and accordingly praises the poets. In the latter view, he clearly changes his perspective and regards poetry to be the result of the poet’s imitation of nature, two degrees lower than the ideal (mesali) fact. Ethically, he criticizes poetry because he considers it to instigate mean feelings and to destroy wisdom. Later, Aristotle offers some response to Plato’s criticism of poetry.This article studies Plato’s two theories on poetry and presents Aristotle’s defense of poetry.