Poetry and the Image of the Tyrant in Plato’s Republic

Towards the end of the discussion of poetry in Republic X Plato describes poetry as an erōs, a passion from which all right thinking people should tear themselves away, like lovers who realise their passion is doing them no good (607b-608a). Mimetic art as a whole had earlier been figured as a hetaira who consorts with an inferior part of the soul to bring forth base offspring (603a-b), and now poetry herself is envisaged as a dangerously seductive female whose charms must be resisted at all costs. This erōs, which has been engendered since childhood by education, paideia, has its analogue in the master-passion that takes control of the tyrant’s soul at 572e-575a8. The figure of erōs tyrannos is itself a theatrical image (cf. Eur. Hipp. 538) and in this paper I shall look at how poetry and tyranny are linked through a network of imagery and verbal echoes which reinforce the argument for banishing poetry as we know it from the Republic.

Art · Image (mathematics) · Literature · Poetry · Artificial Intelligence · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Computer Science · Philosophy

• A Natureza Performática Do Tirano

  Open Access•Jovelina Maria Ramos De Souza•Prometeus•2020

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