This course will be on Plato and Aristotle. We will spend considerable time on the key texts about literature of these two authors, especially Aristotle’s Poetics, but, since what is called ‘literary theory’ involves a great deal more than literary criticism, we will also spend a lot of time on the larger projects of Plato and Aristotle of which their literary criticism forms a part: questions of the nature of human beings and of human society, the definition of the good life, the the relation of pleasure to ethics, the nature of the real and how the human mind knows the real, and so forth. The ideas of Plato and Aristotle on these topics form the indispensable background to the contemporary discussion of the ‘ethicopolitical’ that has come to dominate literary studies. All of this background will be brought to a focus on the question of what art, techne, meant to the Greeks. Techne is a much broader concept than our ‘art’; it includes shoemaking and politics as well as the art of poetry; and, as you will see, the concept of techne is fundamental to the way in which the original concepts of Platonic metaphysics were evolved.

Readings from Plato:
Sept 30-Ion
Oct 2, 7, 9--Phaedo
Oct. 14, 16, 23--Phaedrus
Oct. 28, 30; Nov. 4, 6--Republic
Readings from Aristotle:
Nov.13, 18, 20, 25, Dec. 2, 4—Poetics
Dec. 2, 4—Selections from Metaphysics, Physics, and Nichomachaean Ethics

I will ask you for a 5-7 page working paper on Plato, due Nov. 4, and a final paper of the same length on Plato and Aristotle, due finals week.