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Who Calls the Tune: Literary Criticism, Theatrocracy, and the Performance of Philosophy in Plato’s Laws
- American Journal of Philology
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 134, Number 4 (Whole Number 536), Winter 2013
- pp. 557-601
- 10.1353/ajp.2013.0045
- Article
- Additional Information
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This article offers a study of literary criticism in Plato’s Laws. According to standard accounts of the history of literary criticism, fourth-century philosophers represent a break from archaic and democratic notions of poetic judgment. The interpretation presented here suggests that the Laws synthesizes archaic and contemporary critical practices. In doing so, it fashions literary criticism as a performance of philosophy, combining claims to social and political authority with the evaluation of texts according to independent, objective criteria. The Laws thereby offers a hybrid model of contemporary critical practices to extend the ideal city’s political and moral philosophy into contexts of performance.