Epilogue: The Legacy of Presocratic Poetics

Summary

This section substantiates the claim that Xenophanes, Parmenides and Empedocles played an instrumental role in the emergence of what may be termed the Classical conception of literature – that is, the view that a work of literature is a mortally crafted artefact that reflects a true state of affairs only symbolically or mimetically – by drawing attention to evidence for their influence on certain important developments in fifth- and fourth-century BCE poetics. These include (a) fifth-century practices of allegorical interpretation; (b) Gorgias’ statements that poetry is deceptive and is a kind of charm or drug; (c) Democritus’ physical explanations for poetic inspiration and composition; (d) Democritus and the sophists’ analytical approaches to language; and (e) the conceptions of mimesis presented by Plato.