Read the following excerpt from A Little History of Literature by John Sutherland.

Do
you agree or disagree with Plato’s point of view? Why? Present your argument in a
short essay of 250-300 words.

“There have been those, from the ancient Greek philosopher Plato onwards, who

believe that the charms of literature and its spinoff forms (theatre, epic and lyric in Plato’s

day) are dangerous – particularly for the young. Literature distracts us from the real

business of living. It traffics in falsehoods – beautiful falsehoods, it is true, but for that

reason all the more dangerous. The emotions inspired by great literature, if you agree

with Plato, cloud clear thinking. How can you think seriously about the problems of

educating children if your eyes are bleary with tears after reading Dickens’s description

of the death of angelic Little Nell? And without clear thinking, Plato believed, society was

in peril. Give that child Euclid’s Geometry to read in bed at night, not Aesop’s animal fable

about Androcles and the Lion. But, of course, neither life nor human beings are like that.

Aesop’s fables had already been teaching Plato’s contemporaries important lessons – and

delighting them, into the bargain – for two hundred years, and two and a half millennia

later they do the same for us today.”