INTRODUCTION TO THEORY OF LITERATURE ASSIGNMENT

Name : Alivia Najwa Fitriane

Student ID : 13020122190048
Class : IUP

Finding Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Horace Theory of Literature.

A. Socrates
His comedy, Clouds, was produced within a year of the battle of Delium (423) at
which Socrates fought as a hoplite, and when both Xenophon and Plato were infants. In the
play, the character called Socrates heads a Think-o-Rama in which young men study the
natural world, from insects to stars, and study slick argumentative techniques as well, lacking
all respect for the Athenian sense of propriety.

B. Plato (429 – 371 B.C.)

Plato is one of the most famous writers in the Western literary tradition and one of the
most influential authors in the history of philosophy. An Athenian citizen of high status, he
displays in his works his absorption in the political events and intellectual movements of his
time, but the questions he raises are so profound and the strategies he uses for tackling them
so richly suggestive and provocative that educated readers of nearly every period have in
some way been influenced by him, and in practically every age there have been philosophers
who count themselves Platonists in some important respects.

C. Aristotle (384 – 322 B.C.)

Many of the records of Aristotle’s views on art and poetry, much like many other
documents of his philosophical and literary works, were composed around 330 BC. Most of
these exist and survive to this day because they were duly noted down and preserved by his
pupils during his lectures. Aristotle’s insight into poetics primarily revolves around drama.

During a later period when Aristotelianism was gaining more ground around the
world, his original take on drama was divided into two separate segments. The first part
focused on tragedy and epic, and the second part discussed the various details of comedy.
According to Aristotle, a good tragedy should involve the audience and make them feel
katharsis (a sense of purification through pity and fear).

D. Horace (65 - 8 B.C.)

Horace is one of the most outstanding Latin lyric poet and satirist under the emperor
Augustus. The most frequent themes of his Odes and verse Epistles are love, friendship,
philosophy, and the art of poetry. Horace was working on Book I of the Satires, 10 poems
written in hexameter verse and published in 35 BC. The Satires reflect Horace’s adhesion to
Octavian’s attempts to deal with the contemporary challenges of restoring traditional
morality, defending small landowners from large estates (latifundia), combating debt and
usury, and encouraging novi homines (“new men”) to take their place next to the traditional
republican aristocracy.