Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine.

It is interesting to follow the Western tradition of literary criticism.

First off, there’s Plato. Plato approached text in the same way my housemates approach our compost bin; what is in there at one point was ripe fruit, but now it’s just a perversion of what was good. To Plato, the spoken word is the ripe fruit, a pure eido, only once removed from the Intelligible Realm. However, once written down, this text is only a mimesis, an imitation of an imitation, clearly rotten fruit. A shadow in a cave. This rotten fruit should be controlled, censored, and possibly thrown out.

I don’t agree with him. To me, art, human creations, are not shadows or forms of some obscure world, but attempts to pin down what we are trying to communicate. Words cannot and will not ever be entirely accurate or perfect in expressing meaning, but they are the best option.

Aristotle moves a little closer to my own beliefs. He at least views text and literature as a field to be studied and perfected. It is a science. However, to him it still serves a purpose. Perfect this play by perfecting the chorus. Perfect this poetry by following this rhyme scheme. Plots must follow these rising and falling actions. Tragedies must be about the rich and famous. Audiences should react in this way. Do all this, and you will preserve wisdom. It wasn’t about the artist or the audience. It was about perfecting a field by fixing the people.

Augustine gets it though.

Augustine seems to fall under many different schools. He praised reading texts in their original language, but then sways to the other side when he notes that tropes demand cultural context. He mentions that literal is not figurative and that tone matters. He takes a step that is still offending people today and says that figurative interpretation is okay.

However, my favorite part is when he notes that thoughts, speech, and the written word can be one in the

same. That they all have the potential to be signs from God.

This is a large step away from Aristotle’s careful cataloging. It is an even larger leap away from Plato’s scorn of rhetoric and written word.

All three of these thinkers have set the stage for the rest of our theorists and critics, or even broader, they have set the stage for literature for the next thousand years. I am curious to follow their influences in the weeks to come. I sense that more skeptics, scientist, and theologians are in the works.