On the Democritean concept of poetic inspiration
type: CreativeWork
description: The concept of poetic inspiration as a species of madness has usually been traced back to Democritus of Abdera, who is believed to have been the first to use the vocabulary of ecstatic possession for the characteristic activity of the talented poet, in implicit contrast with that of the philosopher. This essay reconsiders the Democritean fragments on poets and poetry in light of those pertaining to divinity, mind, and perception, concluding that later suppositions about the irrational inspiration of poets cannot be applied to Democritus, who seems instead to have looked to the inspired poet as a paradigm for his own conception of the optimally perceptive mind.
abstract: The concept of poetic inspiration as a species of madness has usually been traced back to Democritus of Abdera, who is believed to have been the first to use the vocabulary of ecstatic possession for the characteristic activity of the talented poet, in implicit contrast with that of the philosopher. This essay reconsiders the Democritean fragments on poets and poetry in light of those pertaining to divinity, mind, and perception, concluding that later suppositions about the irrational inspiration of poets cannot be applied to Democritus, who seems instead to have looked to the inspired poet as a paradigm for his own conception of the optimally perceptive mind.
author: Wash, Leon
language: en
keywords: Democritus, enthousiasmos
date published: 2012-05-22T00:20:45Z
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:25:29Z
provider: University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/2142/30997