Mimesis, Plato and the poet

Chapter 1, Literary Criticim, and Theory, From Plato to Postcolonialism by Pelagia Goulimari Plato stands at the foundation of Western literary theory, both shaping and challenging the role of poetry in civic and philosophical life. In dialogues like Ion, Republic, and Phaedrus, he presents poetry as divinely inspired but irrational, emotionally seductive, and potentially dangerous to the rational order of the soul and state. Later thinkers variously revise or reject Plato’s legacy: Rousseau and Wordsworth defend emotion as morally redemptive; Nietzsche and Pater invert Plato’s values to celebrate aesthetics and becoming; while Brecht, Benjamin, and Marcuse politicize his suspicion of art to advocate critical engagement. Poststructuralists like Derrida, Deleuze, Baudrillard, and Kristeva deconstruct Plato’s binaries, revealing his texts as rich, unstable sites of meaning. Goulimari concludes that Plato’s thought remains a generative force in literary theory, continuously reinterpreted to reflect evolving debates about truth, art, and representation.