ABSTRACT

Was the philosophy of literature an invention of classical antiquity? Since all the major phases and movements of Greco-Roman philosophy, from presocratic origins to the Neoplatonism of late antiquity, saw reason to engage with practices we now count as “literature”, it is hard to avoid some kind of affirmative answer to that question. But the answer needs modifying in the light of historical and conceptual complexities. Antiquity brought into being not one, but several (potential) philosophies of literature, and it did so with results which were, and remain, intrinsically contentious.