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"Psychology, politics and poetry in Republic IV and X". In this paper, I argue that in the Republic the possibility of a good koinōnia is hindered by the emotional potency and psychological perversion of mimetic-pleasurable poetry, which stimulates and strengthens the irrational part of the soul of its recipients through the imitation of characters linked to desire and anger. To this end, I examine, first, some of the passages in Republic IV in which it is possible to subscribe to the priority of the psychic tripartition over the political tripartition. Secondly, I point out some of the central features of the psychological critique of mimetic-pleasurable poetry in Republic X. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plato's Republic X attack on imitative poetry is based in the metaphysics of appearance, since appearances are the objects and products of imitation. I offer a new reading, showing that Plato's account coherently introduces appearances as a new type of item, distinct from Forms and sensible particulars, and applies beyond imitation to a broad range of appearances. Focusing on the importance of perspective to Plato's reasoning, I argue that an appearance is a relation that comes about between a material particular and an apprehending subject. Ordinarily, appearances are transparent : they confer determinate awareness on the subject, but are not the objects of our awareness insofar as we are appeared to. This reading resolves longstanding obscurities, grounds an improved account of imitation, and shows that Plato here presents the cornerstone of a general theory of appearance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article intends to incorporate imitation, the creative emulation of existing texts, into the framework of André Lefevere's rewriting theory. Building on past translation theories, recent scholarship in translation studies, and the findings of related academic fields, it distinguishes two different meanings of the term imitation: the free method of translation commonly used in translation studies and the creative emulation of earlier models fruitfully explored in the study of hypertextuality and poetic influence. It argues that imitation in the second sense, offering illuminating insights into textual relations and literary influence, deserves to be conceived as a distinctive type of rewriting, since Lefevere habitually uses the word without purging it of the second meaning and readily acknowledges the possibility of new rewriting forms. By analyzing the celebrated Chinese intellectual Zhou Zuoren's (1885–1967) appropriation of the English poet William Blake's (1757–1827) poems on children in the May Fourth era (1915–1927), this essay demonstrates that imitation can not only exhibit the distinguishing features of Lefevere's rewriting, but also provide fresh insights into translation studies and beyond through its assistance in identifying hitherto unknown borrowings from foreign literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]