The Indirection of Influence: Poetics and Pedagogy in Aristotle and Plato

In its fidelity to Aristotle’s Poetics, David Hansen’s “A Poetics of Teaching” reveals a tension between the end of the poet’s work in the poem and the end of the work of poetry in the effect it has on its audience. While Aristotle defines the purpose of poetry in its effect, he equally claims that the poet’s explicit courting of the audience for the sake of effect is the mark of lesser poetry. To understand this tension in its relation to education, I inquire into the psychology and possible pedagogy of poetic influence: first, through Diotima’s speech on poesis and Eros in Plato’s Symposium; second, through poetics and belatedness in Hannah Arendt and Harold Bloom; and, finally, through Socrates’s pedagogical poetry in the Phaedo.