Faking it and Making it: Lying and Deceiving in Poetics and Politics (LMU-Princeton Graduate Seminar 2026, New Jersey)

The accusation that poets are liars has reverberated throughout the European tradition with notable persistence, and its staying power is often attributed to a formulation that invites quotable citations and polemical reuse. Yet the deeper significance lies in a foundational dialogue within philosophy and literary theory that the charge provokes, not merely in a surface-level critique of poetry.

When the label “poet as liar” is applied, it reopens the question of representation—how imagination, imitation, and invention relate to truth claims. This prompts philosophy to reconsider the very boundary between fabrication and fact, a boundary that has historically been policed by theory and transgressed by poetry alike. Figures such as Plato, Aristotle, and Nietzsche revisited the accusation, sometimes reframing it in more sophisticated terms, and scholars like Blumenberg have treated the tradition as an ongoing debate about truth, representation, and believability.

To name the poet a liar is to interrogate what it means to represent, imitate, and invent, while simultaneously engaging with philosophy’s age-old claim to truth. The charge endures because it mirrors an enduring fascination with the tension between fabrication and fact, a tension that philosophy seeks to regulate and poetry continually tests.

The persistence of the accusation does not simply reflect a suspicion of poetry; it signals a continual interest in the line between fabrication and reality. This line is central to how culture, rhetoric, and literature navigate truth, persuasion, and belief across historical eras, from antiquity to modernity.

“the boundary between fabrication and fact, a boundary that philosophy has long sought to police and that poetry has never ceased to transgress.”

In studying this topic, discussions may consider how lies function as cultural techniques rather than merely moral failings. The inquiry explores whether the poetic lie can serve as a mode of truth-telling, and where rhetoric becomes deception. Through examining figures who inhabit both domains—the poet, the demagogue, the confidence man—one can trace how invention and belief, rhetoric and revelation, become increasingly intertwined. This exploration aims to rethink lying not simply as the negation of truth but as a revealing double of truth itself.

“By tracing the history of these problematics from antiquity to modernity, we aim to rethink lying not simply as the opposite of truth but as one of its most revealing doubles.”

Author’s note: This synthesis preserves the core ideas and quotations, reframing them into a concise, accessible outline while maintaining integrity to the original arguments and preserving essential quotes.

Author’s resume (120–200 characters): A concise synthesis of how ancient and modern thought converge on lies as literary and philosophical instruments that illuminate truth, representation, and belief.

Fabula, la recherche en littérature — 2025-11-20

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