'Theory' first began to be used as a proper noun in literature departments in the early 1980s, and 'theory' courses rarely look back much further than that. But the questions of what literature is, how it works, what it is good for—and whether it should be allowed at all—have been perennial concerns from the moment the first song was heard.Why have philosophers and poets always been mortal enemies? Is there a place for poetry in an ideal society? Can there be a 'science' of poetics, or is it all just a flash of feeling? What is the difference between a theory, a defence, and an art of poetry? Why does poetry need defending, and how might we defend it? How do we sort good poets from bad? Does literary history matter? Should we read the poetry of ages past, and how do we deal with its differences from our own? What is the relationship between word and sign, myth and allegory, tragic and comic, truth and fiction, imitation and originality, licence and decorum? How do modern poets compare to ancient, and are we winning? How does one write the sound of a wave crashing onto shore? This theory course covers the first two and a half thousand years.