In Defence of Poetry: Intertextual Dialogue and the Dynamic of Appropriation in Plutarch’s De audiendis poetis

Abstract

Intertextuality may be defined as the interaction between different texts, a dialogic relationship found especially in literary works and which the reader is asked to decipher. The absorption and tacit transformation of other texts in Plutarch’s work suggests that the intertextuality in De audiendis poetis can be approached as literary intertextuality, making it both critical and creative. The allusion to other texts is the most important thread that weaves argumentative discourse and evidences together, in other words, the benefits that can be drawn from reading the poets.