The works collected in this volume have profoundly shaped the history of criticism in the Western world: they created much of the terminology still in use today and formulated enduring questions about the nature and function of literature. In Ion, P…

What was the role of mousike, the realm of the Muses, in Greek life? More wide-ranging in its implications than the English 'music', mousike lay at the heart of Greek culture, and was often indeed synonymous with culture. In its commonest form, it r…

This is a commentary on selected texts of Plato concerned with poetry: the Ion and relevant sections of the Republic. It is the first commentary to present these texts together in one volume, and the first in English on Republic 2 and 3 and Ion for…

This book explores the history of the idea of genius from its origins in classical antiquity to its deconstruction in postmodernist criticism. Focusing mainly on the creative arts, the book examines certain key points in the development of the idea,…