Shifting Forms of Mimesis in Johann Christoph Gottsched's Dichtkunst

Abstract

Johann Christoph Gottsched's Dichtkunst, the most prominent poetic handbook in early eighteenth‐century Germany, is a more theoretically fluid text than is usually recognized. The handbook is shaped by the interaction of two conflicting doctrines, one mimetic or world‐reflecting and the other didactic or world‐transforming. In this paper, I trace how the presentation of the “imitation of nature” in the text shifts continually in order to accommodate the desired didactic function of literature. After opening with a semi‐empirical approach, Gottsched turns to more abstract “structural” and “subjective” understandings of verisimilitude, as well as to a theory of the imitation of exceptional cases, all while maintaining the impression that he has never abandoned the notion of “following nature step by step.” An analysis of his argumentative strategies improves our understanding of Gottsched's place in Enlightenment‐era poetics and also illustrates the benefits of closer attention to the neglected concept of literary mimesis.