Colin Burrow. Imitating Authors: Plato to Futurity

Abstract

Colin Burrow’s superb book begins with a question: ‘how do human beings learn sophisticated usage of language from others, and yet end up sounding like themselves (or believing that they do)?’ (p. 1). This sounds rather like a question for experimental psychology (which in fact informs Burrow’s thinking), but in Imitating Authors it is addressed through a rich and erudite discussion of the intellectual history of imitatio in rhetoric and poetic theory and practice. The book begins by distinguishing between mimēsis—the ways in which ‘authors have imitated reality’ (p. 1)—and imitatio—‘the ways in which authors imitate each other’ (p. 1)—and considers theories regarding both in ancient Greece and the development of the Roman rhetorical tradition and its proponents. After a discussion of imitatio in early modern Europe, Burrow’s focus shifts to the theory and practice of imitatio in England from the early modern to the present. The final chapter of the book returns to the opening question of the study but looks instead at non-human imitations in gothic and sci-fi narratives and modern technology: monsters, reanimations, clones, and replicas. Here Burrow discusses in detail simulacrum—a kind of failed imitation that haunts writers on imitatio throughout the ages. Burrow concludes by considering how individuals are inimitable: machines cannot (yet) replicate human imitators. Burrow’s argument for why this is the case is fundamental to all his arguments about imitatio: ‘Transformation is a necessary consequence of replication, even if that replication consists of the exact copying of a text into a new setting. The machine of life is a machine that changes things as it reproduces them’ (p. 422).