ABSTRACT
In one sense, Stephen Henderson implicit rebuke to Brooks and Warren anticipates many efforts to challenge received assumptions about aesthetic value. But if Henderson counters Brooks and Warren, he also parallels them, matching anthology with anthology and, by implication, literary tradition with literary tradition. In this dialogue, Socrates's interlocutor, Ion, returns from a festival where he has won first prize for his abilities as a rhapsode, a performer and interpreter of poetry, specifically the poetry of Homer. When Ion offers to demonstrate his abilities, Socrates politely refuses to provide Ion with an audience, proceeding instead to interrogate Ion on the precise nature of his poetic knowledge. The Socratic dialogue and the critique of poetic interpretation that it advances were very much on the minds of Wimsatt and Beardsley as they formulated their interpretive fallacies, each of which they associate with succumbing to possession rather than with exercising skill or understanding
