The Greco-Latin doctrine of the divine origin of poetry was available to medieval authors through the writings of Horace (on Orpheus) and others, but it was the Latin translations and commentaries by the neo-platonic author Marsilio Ficino of Plato's dialogues Ion and (especially) Phaedrus at the end of the 15th century that led to a significant return of the conception of furor poeticus.
The book examines the role of magic in the lives and thought of such diverse figures as Marsilio Ficino, Francis Bacon and Tommaso Campanella, and its overall influence on the Renaissance.
In 1570 Jean-Antoine de Baïf created one devoted to poetry and music, the Académie de poésie et de musique, inspired by Italian models (such as the academy around Marsilio Ficino).
His work includes translations and studies of Plato, Plutarch (in particular Moralia, the ethic writings about the soul care, education and policy) and Marsilio Ficino.
The neoplatonic texts cited by Doget, which include Marsilio Ficino's Latin version of the Pimander, or Poemander, of Hermes Trismegistus, are seen through the prism of Christian apologetics, and the Phaedo was no doubt chosen in the first place as a vehicle for his commentary because it could be presented as a mythologized version of Christian doctrine.
This spiritual love, which animated Antoine Héroet's Parfaicte Amye (1543) as well, owed much to Marsilio Ficino, the Florentine translator and commentator of Plato's works.