equipment. The genre, what we call the genre of literature, began in the spells cast by witchdoctors, the shamans. Eloquence was thought of as having the power to heal sick minds. The whole idea of eloquence in Cicero’s day— oratory—is the idea of wholeness, healing. And the therapy of the word was—this is, of course, especially true of Christianity—the whole idea of the word, the divine word as healing, the logos , was thought of as therapeutic and it was thought of as most therapeutic when sung and performed richly, in opera and so on.
Student: There’s a book out called Poetry as a Therapeutic Experience . It came out about six months ago. The editor is Lerner.
