Tolstoy identifies the impression of art—namely, “infection”—as a key condition of good art. Infection means that the artist conveys emotions directly experienced through their work, allowing the audience to empathize by feeling the artist’s emotions and internalizing them. This proper emotion, evoked through infection, fosters a unified feeling that forms the basis of fraternity, which…

Aristotle states that what matters most in literature is the very pleasure derived from the nature of imitation. “First, people are naturally inclined to imitate from childhood. Second, everyone takes pleasure in imitations.” – Poetics As seen here, he connects the creative act of poetry to the instinctive human impulse to imitate and the universal…

Plato advocates the expulsion of poets in The Republic. His main point is that literature, being based on a lowly mimetic art appealing to emotions rather than reason, fails to provide universal truth, and therefore poets must be banished. However, this challenge raised by Plato triggered efforts to define the distinctive characteristics of literature, distinguishing…