Poets & Writers

Poets and writers gathers the epic and lyric poets whose work is foundational to a tradition's literature without being itself a work of doctrine, scripture or ritual, Homer and Hesiod for Greek religion, Virgil and Ovid for Rome, Dante for medieval Christendom. A figure belongs here for the poetry's literary standing rather than for a religious office or a mystical claim, which is what separates this heading from the many poet-mystics gathered under their own traditions instead.