ABSTRACT
Literature, like the other forms of art, may be of two fundamental types: Ideational and Sensate. In all essentials, the main fluctuations in the alternation of Ideational and Sensate forms of literature in the course of a Graeco-Roman culture went parallel with similar waves in painting, sculpture, music, and architecture. Greek influence, mainly in the Sensate Hellenistic form, shortened the life of this primitive Ideational and Idealistic literature and quickened the growth of its Sensate form. The period from Plato to Aristotle was transitory in art, literature, and criticism, from the Idealistic to the Sensate. A considerable and ever-increasing literature of art criticism from a purely aesthetic standpoint develops. Criticism also becomes erudite and scholastic. The Idealistic character is manifest in all the main aspects of what is styled here Idealistic art and finally in the character of the art and literary criticism of the period.
