Then I knew that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration; they are like diviners or soothsayers who also say many fine things, but do not understand the meaning of them.

Since the time of Aristotle, one of the tasks of literature has been described as mimesis, imitation. Mimesis is also a New Testament theme (see 1 Cor. 4:16; 11:1; Eph. 5:1; Phil. 3:17). But, Wood points out, this doesn’t mean that literature and poetry are supposed to “copy” reality. It’s actually about cultivating a sense of plausibility.

Friedrich Nietzsche declared in The Birth of Tragedy that ‘art owes its continuous evolution to the Apollonian–Dionysian duality’, he was implicitly declaring his belief that the tensions between form and content, head and heart, discipline and desire were the building blocks of dramatic structure.