Book description
When Plato set his dialogs, written texts were disseminated primarily by performance and recitation. He wrote them, however, when literacy was expanding. Jill Frank argues that there are unique insights to be gained from appreciating Plato's dialogs as written texts to be read and reread. At the center of these…
Why read it?
1 author picked Poetic Justice as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Plato speaks in the Republic of the “old quarrel between poetry and philosophy”–yet he was a writer of imaginative prose himself. This book shows how seriously Plato took poetry: how many of the crucial ideas in the dialogues grow out of Socrates’ commentary on lines of poetry from Homer, Hesiod, or other archaic Greek authors.
Jill Frank reads Plato very differently from me: she thinks that the Republic is signaling its readers to reject the political ideals that the dialogue seems to propose, in favor of the democratic authority of the individual. But while I don’t agree, I always learn…
From Melissa's list on accessible and thought-provoking books about Plato.
If you love Poetic Justice...
December on 5C4
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
Want books like Poetic Justice?
Our community of 12,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like Poetic Justice.
Share your top 3 reads of 2025!
And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.
1,298
readers submitted
so far, will you?
📚 If you like Poetic Justice, you might also like...
Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman
Kate from Jules et Jim meets I Love Dick.
A young woman filmmaker’s journey of self-discovery, set against a backdrop of the sexual liberation movement of the 1970s and 1980s. In Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman, we follow Ana Fried as she faces the ultimate…
Dark Fae Outcast
Trapped in our world, the fae are dying from drugs, contaminants, and hopelessness. Kicked out of the dark fae court for tainting his body and magic, Riasg only wants one thing: to die a bit faster. It’s already the end of his world, after all.
But while scoring his last…
