Idea Of Mimesis Research Articles

Come perenne metamorfosi. Orazio Costa e la mimesi


 
 
 Orazio Costa, theater director and teacher for over thirty years at the National Academy of Dramatic Arts in Rome, is the author of a pedagogical system called mimic method. It consisted of a theory and a practice aimed at revitalizing the concept of mimesis. The practice included exercises on identification with natural phenomena, necessary for staging dramas respectful of human nature and poetic inspiration. While Avant-gardes rejected art as imitation of an object, and the new theatrical forms refused the value of the dramaturgical text within the performance, Costa defended the role of literature and the representation of human events in the theatrical ritual. Despite the accusations of traditionalism, his idea of mimesis is absolutely in line with the twentieth- century reception of the notion. Like authors such as Benjamin, Adorno, Ricoeur, the director has analyzed mimesis as an innate behavior, and he based his aesthetic positions on this conception. For Costa, art is the wonderful metaphor of the encounter between the individual and nature, which pushes towards forms of expressions comprehensible to the community.
 
 

Plato in Therapy: A Cognitivist Reassessment of theRepublic's Idea ofMimesis

Plato in Therapy: A Cognitivist Reassessment of the<i>Republic</i>'s Idea of<i>Mimesis</i>

Travelling cultures: religion, travel, and subjectivity in V.S. Naipaul’s Among the Believers and William Dalrymple’s Nine Lives

ABSTRACTThis article examines V.S. Naipaul's Among the Believers (1981) and William Dalrymple's Nine Lives (2009) as texts that interrogate the metropolitan subjectivity of the traveller who arrives at sacred sites from a discursive grounding in secular modernity and whose rationalist, post-Enlightenment notion of travel as observation, empirical experience and knowledge, embedded in a conception of physical space as a tangible, homogeneous entity, enters into an interpretive struggle with travel as associated with a set of metaphysical ideas and identity practices which formulate the itinerary act as austerity, penance, subversion, transformation and social protest. Using Emmanuel Levinas's idea of the ethical encounter, Judith Butler's concept of primary vulnerability, and Michael Taussig's idea of mimesis, this essay explores how travel in conjunction with non-secular epistemes and praxes reconfigures culture, agency, selfhood, and power outside the rubric of modernity and liberal individualism.

МИМЕСИС И ПРАВДОПОДОБИЕ В ДРАМАТИЧЕСКОМ ТЕАТРЕ

The article considers how the idea of mimesis and likelihood relates with different types of drama theatre. During the study, the author identifies the stereotype to reduce mimesis to imitation of reality. The paper shows that such a meaning deprives the Aristotelian term of universality, making it relevant only for one of the types of theatre. The research observes fruitfulness of mimesis interpretation, proposed by A. F. Losev, for theatrical studies. This conclusion will be useful for theatre experts and theatre practitioners, who use the notions “mimesis” and “likelihood”.

A Matter of Mimesis: Kierkegaard and Ricoeur on Narrative Identity

AbstractThe overall aim in this text is to make clear the relationship between Kierkegaard and Ricoeur with regard to the notion of narrative identity. Thus, I would like to demonstrate that Ricoeur’s idea of mimesis becomes highly present in Kierkegaard’s writings in the very moment one recognizes the importance of the narrative in his authorship and takes the existential implications of these narratives into account. In unfolding some of these implications, I will emphasize the crucial difference between identifying oneself with one’s own history and the individual’s identification with an extraneous story. At the end of my text, I will use Kierkegaard to articulate some conflicts implied in Ricoeur’s idea of the third mimesis and its relation to the notion of an imitatio Christi

Images-within-Images in Italian Painting (1250–1350): Reality and Reflexivity by Péter Bokody (review)

Reviewed by: Images-within-Images in Italian Painting (1250–1350): Reality and Reflexivity by Péter Bokody Judith Collard Bokody, Péter, Images-within-Images in Italian Painting (1250–1350): Reality and Reflexivity, Farnham, Ashgate, 2015; hardback; pp. 264; 20 colour, 70 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. £65.00; ISBN 9781472427052. The ongoing importance placed on Italian painting between 1250 and 1350 is demonstrated in Péter Bokody’s new book, which has its origins in his doctoral dissertation. The Hungarian art historian, now teaching at Plymouth University, examines the major shift in painting that occurred at this time, which led to a new visual language that transformed the two-dimensional image into a representation of three-dimensional space. This period is given heightened significance because it marks the beginning of the familiar narrative that leads on towards the development of Italian Renaissance art and the growing dominance of perspectival imagery in European art. Italian art ceased to be dominated by Byzantine art at this time, and began to develop its own identity. The artists covered in this discussion – Giotto, Duccio, Simone Martini, and the Lorenzetti brothers – are familiar ones and the sites include Assisi, Rome, Florence, Siena, and Padua. Focusing on painting, Bokody suggests that the images produced at this time had become ‘imitations of reality in terms of their spatial, chronological and emotional aspects’, that they were a ‘mimesis of reality’. While John White and others have focused particularly on the treatment of rectangular objects creating three-dimensionality on a two-dimensional plane, Bokody does not discuss the development of perspective. While the idea of mimesis was to have ongoing ramifications, he is as interested in the more reflexive pictorial tendencies like trompe l’oeil, architectural illusionism, or the idea of meta-painting. He argues that these self-reflexive aspects perhaps also played a role in the development of this new realistic style. Barthes’s concept of the ‘reality effect’ is also evoked in this analysis, as the presence of superfluous or insignificant elements can contribute to a work’s realism, becoming key elements in a visual rhetoric. Bokody focuses his research particularly on Giotto and contemporaries such as the Lorenzettis and Taddeo Gaddi, while the frescoes at Assisi provide many of the examples. Like White in his earlier study, he also side-steps awkward questions such as the attribution questions in this building and the involvement of Giotto. Bokody organises his study into seven chapters, exploring questions around three-dimensional space, the role of meta-painting, and the idea of the [End Page 268] reality effect. In this chronological exploration, he begins with the emergence of images-within-images in the Legend of St Francis in the Upper Church of Assisi where they played an important iconographical role, and served as a key element in the work’s realism. The depiction of St Francis praying before the cross of San Damiano is an important example of this, demonstrating too how the representation of prayer was already being depicted in a Franciscan context and revealing how images were venerated. As the focus of the book is on the marginal or secondary images-within-images labelled ‘parargon’, in the second chapter, illusionistic frames, columns, and chambers are discussed, highlighting how mural paintings reproduced real architectural elements. The third chapter discusses Barthes’s idea, examining both the depiction of architecture and images-within-images and the influence of antique and contemporary models, although these did not necessarily conform to pre-existing models. The self-reflexive aspects of some paintings are also explored in Chapter 4. The layering of meanings was also made possible in these works, and its implications for Netherlandish painting is developed in the next chapter. Giotto’s Arena Chapel frescoes are discussed in Chapter 6, while the final chapter discusses the impact of these innovative approaches in the work of artists, such as Bernardo Daddi and Taddeo Gaddi, who followed Giotto. This is a clever book that reinvestigates familiar, if often overlooked, aspects of this significant moment in Italian art. It reflects the hold this period has had on the historical imagination when Italian art moved out of the shadow of Byzantine influences to develop its...

Ihmisen ja eläimen suhteesta varhaisessa kreikkalaisessa ajattelussa

Toisenlajisia eläimiä huomioiva ja mm. kasvissyöntiä puolustava ajattelu on antiikin filosofiassa omalaatuinen jatkumo, joka ulottuu esiklassiselta kaudelta myöhäisantiikkiin. Tutkin artikkelissani tämän ajattelun suhdetta varhaisempaan kreikkalaiseen kulttuuriperinteeseen, jonka ilmauksina tarkastelen arkaaista runoutta, mytologiaa ja uskonnollisia rituaaleja. Eläinmyönteisistä filosofeista esimerkeikseni olen poiminut Empedokleen (n. 490–430 eKr.) ja Plutarkhoksen (n. 45–125 jKr.). Lähtökohtanani on ihmetys, jota Plutarkhoksen voimakkaat eläinten tappamista vastustavat tekstit herättävät antiikin perinteisesti hyvin antroposentriseksi miellettyä taustaa vasten. Plutarkhoksen osoittamia jälkiä pitkin etenen ajassa taaksepäin, esisokraatikko Empedokleeseen. Näiden kahden filosofin ajattelusta nostan esiin erityisesti oikeudenmukaisuuteen sekä ihmisten ja muiden eläinten sukulaisuuteen ja kosmiseen kohtalonyhteyteen liittyviä teemoja. Artikkelini jälkimmäisessä osassa tutkin eläinmyönteisten filosofien taustalla mahdollisesti vaikuttavaa kollektiivista perinnettä. Tarkastelen eläinhahmoja ja eläinmetaforien käyttöä varhaisessa runoudessa, esimerkkeinäni otteita Homerokselta ja kuorolyyrikko Alkmanilta (600-luku eKr.). Runokuvien rinnalla jäljitän kreikkalaisen mytologian välittämää kuvaa eläimistä, erityisesti eläinten ja jumalien suhdetta. Jäljitystä pohjustavat esimerkit Zeuksen eläimellisistä muodonmuutoksista sekä havainto kreikan ”eläintä” merkitsevän ζῷον-sanan semanttisesta avaruudesta, joka kattaa toisenlajisten eläinten lisäksi niin ihmiset kuin jumalat. Lopuksi tarkastelen kahta uskonnollista rituaalia, spartalaista nuorten neitojen kuororituaalia ja attikalaista Artemis Brauronian karhujuhlaa, joissa eläinmetaforiikka syvenee kohti metamorfoosia, samaistumista toisenlajiseen eläimeen ja muuntumista toiseksi rituaalin tilassa. Johtopäätöksenä esitän, että arkaaisen kreikkalaisen kasvatuksen perustana toimiva ja erityisesti rituaalisissa yhteyksissä hyödynnetty mimesiksen ajatus sekä edellytti että ruokki kykyä samaistua toiseen, myös toiseen eläimeen, ja että kaikuja tästä syvästä yhteyden tunteesta voidaan tavoittaa esimerkiksi Empedokleen ja Plutarkhoksen ajattelussa.

Classicisation or representation? Mimesis in Byzantine pictorial arts as a derivative of style

The idea of mimesis in art theory has been neglected by Byzantine scholars. Reasons for this may lie in the fact that the understanding of the term in Byzantium was very complex and that it changed over time. In the Early Byzantine period and the so-called Macedonian Renaissance, a tendency to use tonal modelling, which was inherited from ancient Greco-Roman art, can still be observed. Starting in the late tenth century they give way to a more linear style. Simultaneously, a change in the understanding of mimesis in theological writings can also be observed. The aim of this paper is to introduce the problem of a mimetic approach in visual arts as a phenomenon in Byzantine culture.

The Paradox of Mimesis in Sidney's Defence of Poesie and Marlowe's Doctor Faustus

The article explores the paradoxical tensions underlying the concept of artistic mimesis and verisimilitude in the English Renaissance by submitting to close analysis, side by side, the rhetorical positions of Sidney's Defence of Poesie and the dramatic spectacle of Marlowe's Doctor Faustus . Sidney's Defence , with its contradictory ethical oscillations, reveals the many irreconcilable pressures that the Aristotelian idea of mimesis had to contend with in the early modern period. Marlowe's tragic farce, on the other hand, goes beyond theory and fully exploits these pressures for their most absurd and literally spectacular dramatic possibilities.

A centralidade da experiência na constituição das representações: contribuições interdisciplinares para o campo da comunicação

O objetivo deste artigo é discutir o papel da experiência na constituição das representações. Para tanto, define a noção de experiência, analisando a abordagem pragmatista de John Dewey e algumas contribuições contemporâneas. Discute, em seguida, o conceito de representação, explorando a concepção clássica de Durkheim, a ideia de mimese de Paul Ricoeur e a noção de imaginação simbólica de Gilbert Durand. O artigo destaca a complexidade e a dinamicidade que marcam os fluxos de significação. Ele enfatiza o papel do simbólico na construção dos sujeitos e da sociedade, bem como a dimensão interativa da experiência. Ressalta, ainda, a mútua construção entre experiência e representação, algo central para as análises no campo da comunicação.

Adorno’s Mimesis and its Limitations for Critical Social Thought

Adorno’s philosophy has enjoyed a resurgence of attention in political theory over the past decade. In this paper, I challenge contemporary efforts to adopt his critical theory by arguing that his conceptions of mimesis and negative dialectics, which are central to his thought, are ultimately unsatisfactory. I begin by critiquing the normative content of the negative dialectic, and then move on to explore its problematic relation with mimesis. In the following sections I argue that mimesis cannot do the normative work that Adorno requires of it. Rather, his idea of mimesis fails to inform critique (understood as ‘negative’ thought), relies on a problematic pre-modern idea of authenticity, and is incompatible with theoretical analyses of modern complex societies.

A Feminine Crevice in the Male Genre: Lady Mary Wroth's Pamphilia to Amphilanthus vs. Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophil and Stella

This paper studies two sonnet sequences: Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophil and Stella and Lady Mary Wroth's Pamphilia to Amphilanthus from the French feminist perspective (especially Irigaray's idea of mimesis). Following those conventions set by Petrarch, most of the sonnet sequences in the sixteenth and the earlier seventeenth centuries focus on exploring the contradictory feelings a lover experiences when he sues a beautiful but aloof lady, and therefore, are usually regarded as a male genre. As Sidney's niece, Wroth was heavily influenced by Sidney and her sonnet sequence is seemingly a mimesis of Sidney's. Through a feminist scrutiny, this paper tries to show that Wroth's sonnet sequence is not only a repetition of this male genre but also subversion. Different from Sidney's Astrophil and Stella, which silences and effaces the beloved lady, Wroth's Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, retrieving the female voice and subjectivity, helps us have a better and balanced view of the sonnet world in the sixteenth and earlier seventeenth centuries.

Mimetic Theory in Chinese Literary Thought

In the field of Chinese and comparative literature, a scholarly consensus holds that the idea of mimesis is not entirely absent, but a mimetic theory of literature is nonexistent in the Chinese tradition. The assumed absence of mimetic theory has become the basis for a fundamental dichotomy between Chinese expressive views and Western mimetic views of literature. This essay presents solid evidence to prove the contrary. By constructing a Chinese mimetic theory in relation to its Western counterpart, it explores how mimesis evolved in the historical development of Chinese aesthetic thought, how it appeared in the poetic theories of some influential literary thinkers, and what significance it has for the mainstream of Chinese literary thought. It argues that mimetic theory constitutes a fascinating but neglected current in Chinese literary thought, one which opens new horizons in comparative poetics.

Romanticism and the Materiality of Nature by Onno Oerlemans (review)

YES, 34, 2004 YES, 34, 2004 fraughtwith pitfalls.In response, Burwickoffersus the possibilityof a more inclusive , comprehensivedefinition of 'imitation'within a Romantic context, one which includes the mind's own workings: 'The rise of individualism, a major factor in the political turmoil of the age, was also manifest in the literaryexploration of the individual consciousness and the individual experience. The paradox, of course, was that the very self-assessmentcrucial to the social changes then taking place would be appraisedby criticsof subsequentgenerations as self-indulgentescapism' (p.Io). By widening the scope of Romantic mimesis from 'what' the mind beholds, to 'how' it beholds, Burwick opens up a groundbreaking,comparative discussion of how the post-KantianGermanphilosopherswere influentialin the constructionof a BritishRomantic aesthetic. The first three chapters examine the ideas of I'art pour I'art(goingback to the cross-culturalfirstuse of the phrase in 1804),idemetalter(difference as an essential markerof the artist'stransformingactivity),and palingenesis of mind as art respectively.Burwick'sdirectengagementwith the firsttexts in which Schleiermacher, Schelling, Hegel, Coleridge, and De Quincey articulated their thoughtsis particularlyrefreshing,and it drawsattentionto the dangersof reductive readingin laterinterpretations.The finalthree chaptersofferfurtherexplorationsof the persistentpresence of mimesis as a major issue in Romantic texts. Chapter 4 focuseson ekphrasis,on how the mimetic processitselfcan be the object of mimesis, illustratedby an exceptionallypenetratingreading of De Quincey's 'Dream Fugue' in TheEnglish Mail Coach. Chapter 5 casts new light on Coleridge and Wordsworth by an emphasis on how 'optical reflection [...] is a model for visual perception as well as an analogue of mental reflection'(p. 148).The final chapter explores 'three novels of the romantic period which develop their irony through a structuralbifurcation that exposes the mimetic pretense of the storytelling'(exemplifiedin Charles BrockdenBrown'sArthur Mervyn, E. T. A. Hoffmann'sKater Murr,andJames Hogg's Confessions ofa JustifiedSinner). However troubled, tormented, or neurotic the Romantics' engagement with the whole idea of mimesis might have been at times, they did make a convincing aestheticout of the mimeticpredicament.Burwickputs it splendidly:'Ifoccasionally in a perverse pique or an ironic gesture they attempted to shatter one mirror or the other, it was only with the result that every splinter remained to catch new reflections'(p. i5). A warmly recommended study. VICTORIA UNIVERSITY OFWELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND HEIDITHOMSON Romanticismand the Materiality of Nature. By ONNO OERLEMANS. Toronto, Buffalo, NY, and London: University of Toronto Press. 2002. vii + 253 pp. $45; f28. ISBN: 0-8020-4863-3. Given the title and the topic of this book, the assertion that 'romanticism is an important origin for environmentalist thought' should probably come as no surprise. That does not make it accurate. Possibly, indeed probably, for some readers Romantic literatureis the origin of their 'stronginterest'in descriptionsof the externalworld and even perhapstheir 'environmentalistthought', but let us not make the mistake of thinking such interest sprang into being in the Romantic period. More than enough has been writtenabout medieval landscapesand Renaissance forests to correct such misapprehension.What ecocriticism does, and here Onno Oerlemans's book is on sounder ground, is to offer a newer, more rigorous fraughtwith pitfalls.In response, Burwickoffersus the possibilityof a more inclusive , comprehensivedefinition of 'imitation'within a Romantic context, one which includes the mind's own workings: 'The rise of individualism, a major factor in the political turmoil of the age, was also manifest in the literaryexploration of the individual consciousness and the individual experience. The paradox, of course, was that the very self-assessmentcrucial to the social changes then taking place would be appraisedby criticsof subsequentgenerations as self-indulgentescapism' (p.Io). By widening the scope of Romantic mimesis from 'what' the mind beholds, to 'how' it beholds, Burwick opens up a groundbreaking,comparative discussion of how the post-KantianGermanphilosopherswere influentialin the constructionof a BritishRomantic aesthetic. The first three chapters examine the ideas of I'art pour I'art(goingback to the cross-culturalfirstuse of the phrase in 1804),idemetalter(difference as an essential markerof the artist'stransformingactivity),and palingenesis of mind as art respectively.Burwick'sdirectengagementwith the firsttexts in which Schleiermacher, Schelling, Hegel, Coleridge, and De Quincey articulated their thoughtsis particularlyrefreshing,and it drawsattentionto the dangersof reductive readingin laterinterpretations.The finalthree chaptersofferfurtherexplorationsof the persistentpresence of mimesis as a major issue in Romantic texts. Chapter...

Paul Alexis Trublot : du vrai et du faux dans le Naturalisme

Paul Alexis — considered the most loyal friend and disciple of Zola - contributed largely to the diffusion of naturalism thanks to his numerous chronicles scatterd in the journals of the time. The most famous ones are in «Cri du Peuple» (1883-1888), for which Alexis used the zolaesque pseudonym «Trublot, » borrowed from Pot-Bouille. In these pages he staunchly advocates for the principles of naturalism in poetry but, in a curious contrast, he does so by unorthodox means, which sometimes border on hoax and blur the line between real and fictional, between serious and comical, between raw documentation and artifice. The idea of mimesis and transparency in naturalist writing, extolled in Alexis' discourse, is therefore broached through a formal fabrication, which owes a lot to romantic practices and to the techniques of the «industrial» novel. The ques- tion then is: Would the journal - less legitimate and at the margins of literature - authorize a freer outlook on the constraining principles of theory? Would it also authorize a more playful form of dispute, which would bring Alexis closer to his friends from Médan and also to those transgressive innovators who used the journal to start a poetic revolution (the group «Chat Noir, » the Hydropates) ?

Bombistic Maximalism, Transparent Analysis, and Feminist Actionism: On Some Mimetic Techniques in Contemporary German Theatre

The premise of postmodernism, including the death of the author and the dissolution of the text into electronic media, has questioned the critical character of literature and theatre in relation to social structures. Feminist writers and artists such as the performance artist Ginka Steinwachs, the playwright Gisela von Wysocki, and the performance artist and filmmaker Valie Export, however, invigorate social analysis by articulating in their texts, plays, and videos the nature of woman as commodity in contemporary society. Through different uses of dramatic mimetic techniques they demonstrate that contemporary society is permeated with the concept of exchange. This concept of the female figure as item for exchange has been critically explored in such texts as Steinwachs's George Sand (1983), Wysocki's Abendlandleben (1987), and Export's performance piece Korperkonfgurationen (1973). This article will show how these texts expose contemporary society to criticism by means of mirroring its system. In fact, the work of the three artists presented here is located between two different traditions of dramatic mimesis, one that is based on the idea of disappearance through identification and one that is grounded in the idea of mimesis as the productive framework for women's language. In their Dialectic of Enlightenment Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno developed a theory of mimesis, and they located this theory at the intersection of myth and enlightenment. The Shaman's rites, they claim, were directed to wind and rain: the magician imitated demons, behaved frighteningly or made gestures of appeasement. Mimesis is, therefore, a strategy of impersonation in which the magician disappears through identification with another being. In the magic phase, dream images may be related to an object through similarity and name, not necessarily through representation. The connection between image and object is not one of intention but one of relationship (see Horkheimer/Adorno

Mimesis and Possible Worlds

From its origins, i.e., the writings of Plato and Aristotle, Occidental aesthetic thinking has been dominated by the idea of mimesis: Fictions (fictional objects) are derived from reality, they are imitations/representations of actually existing entities. During its long reign, the idea has been interpreted in many different ways and, consequently, the term has accumulated several distinct meanings.' Undoubtedly, these ambiguities can be resolved only by a careful theoretical and semantic analysis of the concept.2 My paper is intended to contribute to this analysis by constructing or reconstructing the theory of mimesis which underlies the praxis of modern mimetic criticism. This approach will prove useful for my specific and restricted purpose: to offer a critique of the popular mimetic phraseology and to propose a promising alternative to mimetic theories of fictionality. Historians of all kinds have been involved in the search for actual

Validating the Possible: Thoughts and Things in James, Rilke, and Musil

The mirror, of course, has often been used as a symbol of art, and it has usually had two meanings: first, the idea of mimesis, in which the mirror is a surface that simply reflects the world of actuality; second, an essentially Romantic idea, is that of the mirror as a symbol of the poetic transformation of reality, a device that heightens the real and raises it to a higher power of itself. Mallarm6's desire to fall through the mirror is an extension of this thought, but in conceiving of mirrorspace as potential physical space it marks a new phase in the use of the mirror-image. Lewis Carroll's Alice is the one who finally takes the plunge, stepping through the looking-glass into a world that strangely illuminates the contradictory logic of our own. The important thing about Alice's looking-glass world is that it is not a pallid imitation of the real world; it is, in its own way, equally real-a valid (though other) version of the world we know. The very idea of stepping into the looking-glass world marks a significant turning-point in the conceptualization of the mirror, whose image had been regarded up to that point as in some sense unreal, even if some thinkers saw it as presenting a kind of higher truth than the world of the actual. In the early