My novel-in-verse, Éros on the Mountain, is heavily inspired by Plato’s seminal philosophical text, The Symposium, in which he discusses and attempts to define, through use of fictionalised versions of his peers, the concept of love. Through several dialogues give by various speakers on different aspects of love (soulmates, the ‘ideal’ love and the characteristics of Éros the god, among others) Plato presents his own ideas on love. In this text, still heralded today as one of the key studies into the concept of love, Plato attempts to find out exactly what love is.

However, how does one define something as complex as love? Does Plato, for all his authority and his characters’ deep thoughts on the subject, manage to come to a definition? Or is he simply performing the act of attempting to define love? Can any person truly give a definitive, determinate answer for something as indeterminate as the phenomenon of love?

This deconstructive reading of the text aims to find out. With references to Plato’s own text, the works of Jacques Derrida, J. Hillis Miller, Roland Barthes and several other writers, as well as readings of my own text, I will examine the possibility of finding a definition for love, and what that possibility means for the future of poetry.