The Mimetic Imperative: War, Fiction, Realism

Abstract

The paper takes as its starting point the memoirs of a French sergeant who took part in Napoleon’s Moscow campaign. After discussion of a number of war narratives from World Wars I and II, it brings out two features. The first is that the vast majority of these do not belong to the genre of fiction. The memoir form has been seen as more appropriate. The second feature is that the mode of narration used, both in fiction and non-fiction, has been that of literary realism, hence the title ‘The Mimetic Imperative’. The paper goes on to discuss aspects of realism, such as attacks on it as being no more than ‘reportage’, the denigrating of the ‘Reality Effect’, and the ‘Chaotic Fallacy’, of assuming that the chaotic aspects of modern war can be replicated in a written text with war as its subject-matter.