The Poetics of Philosophical Language: Plato, Poets and Presocratics in the "Republic"

A close analysis of the Republic s diverse literary styles shows how the peculiarities of verbal texture in Platonic discourse can be explained by Plato s remolding of tropes and techniques from poetry and the Presocratics. This book argues that Plato smuggles poetic language into the Republic s prose in order to characterize the deceitful coloration and polymorphy that accompanies the world of Becoming as opposed to the Real. Plato s distinctive discourse thus can transmit, even to those figures focused on the visual within his Republic, the shiftiness of the base and the unjust.