INTRODUCTION
intro
Plutarch’s essay on the study of poetry is not a discussion of the essentials of poetry, nor an analysis of its various kinds after the manner of Aristotle’s Poetics, but it is concerned with poetry only as a means of training the young in preparation for the study of philosophy later. Some experience with the adumbrations of philosophic doctrines which are to be found in poetry will, in the opinion of the author, make such doctrines seem less strange when they are met later in the actual study of philosophy.
intro
This training is to be imparted, not by confining the reading to selected passages, but by teaching the young to recognize and ignore the false and fabulous in poetry, to choose always the better interpretation, and, in immoral passages where art is employed for art’s sake, not to be deluded into approving vicious sentiments because of their artistic presentation. Such passages may be offset by other passages from the same author or from another author, and, as a last resort, one may try his hand at emending unsavoury lines to make them conform to a higher ethical standard. This last proposal seems to the modern reader a weak subterfuge, but it was a practice not unknown even before Plutarch’s time.
