Theory Of Mimesis Research Articles

Mimesis: Culture--Art--Society

Mimesis, the notion that art imitates reality, has long been recognized as one of the central ideas of Western aesthetics and has been most frequently associated with Aristotle. Less well documented is the great importance of mimetic theories of literature, theater, and the visual arts during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. In this book, the most comprehensive overview of the theory of mimesis since Auerbach's monumental study, Gunter Gebauer and Christoph Wulf provide a thorough introduction to the complex and shifting meanings of the term. Beginning with the Platonic doctrine of imitation, they chart the concept's appropriation and significance in the aesthetic theories of Aristotle, Moliere, Shakespeare, Racine, Diderot, Lessing, and Rousseau. They examine the status of mimesis in the nineteenth-century novel and its reworking by such modern thinkers as Benjamin, Adorno, and Derrida. Widening the traditional understanding of mimesis to encompass the body and cultural practices of everyday life, their work suggests the continuing value of mimetic theory and will prove essential reading for scholars and students of literature, theater, and the visual arts.

Book Reviews

Book review in this article:Timo Airaksinen: The Philosophy of the Marquis de Sade. Passions of Similarity. Arne Melberg Theories of Mimesis

Christian hermeneutics: Paul Ricoeur and the refiguring of theology

Paul Ricoeur is one of the most influential philosophers alive today. This book draws primarily on Ricouer's hermeneutic insights to address the fundamental question of how reference, truth, and meaning are related in the discourse of theology. The author defends the view that theological truth claims cannot be sustained without some appeal to the referential, or in Ricouer's terminology, potential intrinsic to our linguistic practices. What it means for Christians to tell the truth, for their language and life to display and thus elicit trust, cannot be understood apart from an appreciation of the refigurative power of language. By appealing to Aristotle's theory of mimesis (imitation) and muthos (plot), as well as to the ideas of Augustine and Heidegger on time, Paul Ricouer offers striking possibilities whereby theological discourse might renew its task of speaking truthfully of God, and hence of our relation to God, to one another, and to the world.

Concepts of Abstraction in French Art Theory from the Enlightenment to Modernism

ion in French Art Theory 671 asserted that it was entirely ideal in existence.7 Indeed, Diderot questioned very of imitation of nature as essential activity of artistic genius. The artist who copies objects does not produce the line, line of beauty, ideal line but line in some way altered, deformed, individual, 'portraitique,' what amounted to a copy of copy.8 Diderot even claimed that it was impossible to find perfect example of any single object in nature. Where then is true to be found? Only in artist's mind. Agree therefore that this model is purely ideal, and that it is not borrowed directly from any individual image of nature, copy of which would have remained in your imagination and which you could recall, hold beneath your eyes, and copy servilely, unless you did not wish to make yourself portraitist. Agree therefore that when you make beautiful, you do not make what is, not even what could be.9 The last line is clearly directed at traditional position taken by Batteux. Unfortunately, Diderot is not much clearer than Batteux on crucial points.1 Diderot attempted to conceive of mode of imitation that eluded ambiguity of belle Nature. To do so, he adopted platonic model of mimesis to criticize imitation of visible nature since, as Diderot claimed, artist of genius does not content himself with third rank of copy of copy but strives to attain second rank, level of phenomenal nature itself, which regarded as emanation or copy of truth. Diderot then neatly equated this highest level of platonic metaphysics with what modem Plato called general idea.11 But it is here that Diderot is so taxing. Who is this modern Plato? The answer becomes clear when Diderot continues by pointing out that general idea exists only in mind, not in nature. A good guess is John Locke, although he makes strange bedfellow with Plato. Locke had restricted abstract ideas to mind where they were formed 'Denis Diderot, Salon de 1767, repr. in Denis Diderot, Salons, III, ed. Jean Seznec (2nd ed., Oxford, 1983), 56; in his Recherches philosophiques sur l'origine et la du beau (printed under title Beau in second volume of Encyclopedie [1752]), Diderot claimed that Batteux failed to explain just what belle Nature was. Repr. in Denis Diderot, Oeuvres esthetiques, ed. Paul Verniere (Paris, 1965), 406; see also Diderot's Lettre sur les sourds et m uets (1748) for criticism of Batteux's notion of belle Nature. 8 Diderot, Salon de 1767, 57. 9 Ibid., 59. 10 For comparison of Batteux and Diderot and helpful analysis of Diderot's contradictory thought on imitation, see Tzvetan Todorov, Theories of Symbol, tr. Catherine Porter (Ithaca, N.Y., 1982), 115-28. 11 Diderot, Salon de 1767, 57: after citing Plato's theory of mimesis, Diderot stated: Pour bien saisir cette theorie tres abstraite, il faut remarquer que ce que notre Platon moderne appelle ici l'idee generale, le Platon ancien l'appellait la verite ou le premier type. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.128 on Wed, 07 Sep 2016 06:08:19 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

The Social Construction of American Realism by Amy Kaplan (review)

252Reviews For instance, in Dryden's interpretation of Faulkner, the "ghostly presence" of echoing voices in the text make it impossible to have an "original voice" who once and for all can tell an authoritative story (p. 148). Further, in Faulkner, what is undone is the "idea of a pater familias who initiates successive generations of offspring " (p. 153). As a result, Faulkner "also equivocates the idea of narrative or story : as the orderly unfolding of a plot from a single authoritative source" (p. 154). All the questions of generation, authority, and authorship are understandable as revisions or revolts against narrative as an originating patriarchal event. Dryden displays this genealogical language quite convincingly but seems in the end to accept it as the defining contours of "American romance" without examining how romances written by non-canonical writers might affect his generalizations about genre. In a more "enlightened" but equally decisive manner, women and minority writers are again excluded from the critical game as inferences about individual texts that rely on specific familial metaphors are presented as representative of The Form of American Romance. Can a discussion of American romance really afford to overlook the work of Harriet Beecher Stowe, E. D. E. N. Southworth, and Edith Wharton? What sense can we make of our critical vocabularies if they are presented to us as entangled with a "genealogical crisis" that refers to specific gender relationships yet limits the axes of these relationships? What would happen if a critic of American literature would dare to explore together the "genealogical crisis" of romance that privileges not only the father-son metaphor but also the mother-daughter, let alone the mother-son or father-daughter metaphor? Would critical anarchy result, or a tale of intertextuality that echoes the polyphonous voices of our literary past? Are the narratives of the past so neatly divided into separate literary traditions that they symmetrically privilege one gender over another? If they are, then the gender ghettos of American criticism do indeed become golden prisons. Washington State UniversityJoan Burbick Kaplan, Amy. The Social Construction ofAmerican Realism. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1988. 187 pp. Cloth: $29.95. Amy Kaplan's poststructuralist reading of William Dean Howells, Edith Wharton, and Theodore Dreiser puts her at the forefront of critics currently redefining American Realism. Kaplan examines how Realists responded to the turbulent transformation of capitalist society between the Civil War and World War I; she assumes that language does not reflect reality but instead helps to produce and interpret it. If realistic novels written in America do not reflect society—as the traditional theory of mimesis would assert—what then, she asks, do these novels do and how do they do it? To answer these and related questions, she briefly traces the critical background to the study of Realism in America, with special attention to the influence of Lionel Trilling's politics and Richard Chase's romance thesis, then studies how social change, class difference, and mass culture affected the development of American Realism. Faced with social change, American Realists confronted "the growing sense of unreality at the heart of middle-class life" (p. 9), questioned the accessibility of a rapidly changing society to a writer, and searched for what Frederic Jameson calls a "strategy of containment" (p. 10) in their attempt to imagine and manage this society. Kaplan locates their anxiety in the conflict between two versions of reality: fragmented reality caused by class conflict and homogeneous reality caused by the rise Studies in American Fiction253 of a mass culture generated by nationally distributed newspapers, magazines, and best sellers. In treating social change as the foreground rather than as the background of a novel, American Realists struggled to contain conflicting visions of reality and to control "a process of change which seems to defy representation" (p. 10). Kaplan discusses the early professional career of the three authors as they strove to represent society. Howells develops his theory and practice of realism partly as a response to new forms of mass representation and to his anxiety over the possible . collapse of society. Realism becomes a way to constrain social differences and to control potential conflict in society; hence, Howells emphasizes character...

Bertolt Brecht: Chaos According to Plan by John Fuegi, and: Exceptions and Rules: Brecht, Planchon and "The Good Person of Szechwan." by Pia Kleber (review)

Book Reviews JOHN FUEGI. BertolI Brecht: Chaos According to Plan. New York: Cambridge University Press 1987. pp. XIV. 223. illustrated. $39·50; $I2.95(PB). PIA KLEBER. Exceptions and Rules: Brecht, Planchon and "The Good Person of Szechwan." New York: Peter Lang 1987. Pp. 334. illustrated. Thirty years after the death of Bertolt Brecht the interest in his work as playwright and director has not flagged. In these thoroughly political times on awar-tom planet Brecht's ambivalences, his Wandering Jew. and his kind of tight-rope-walker existence all seem emblematic of our modem era. Two new books on Brecht the director and on Brecht's influence on Roger Planchon testify to this increasing awareness. These two thoroughly researched studies complement one another and are a must for every BrechtophiJe, and every student of contemporary drama. A seasoned Brecht scholar, the editor of Brecht HeutelBrecht Today, the Yearbook of the International Brecht Society, John Fuegi has charted Brecht's day~to·day activity as a theatre director from the early days ofhis scandalous Baal (1923) to the last rehearsals of Galileo (1956) which the Berlin Ensemble was to talce to London. Pia Kleber picks up where Fuegi's book stops. Brecht never had a chance to direct his Good Person of Szechwan but enough material was left for Benno Besson's production of 1957. Above all, Exceptions and Rules is a clearly focused study of Brecht's influence upon the French director and playwright Roger Planchon. the administrator of the T.N.P. (Theatre National Populaire) at Villeurbanne. a suburb of Lyons. The ways in which Planchon's political and social concerns affected his dramaturgic development are carefully traced through the evolution of his three stagings of The Good Person (July 1954. October 1954. December 1958). Between the second and the third production. Planchon had a lengthy and decisive meeting with Brecht. Thus, comparisons and contrasts are established by Dr. Kleber between Besson's Berliner production and Planchon's final staging of the play at the Theatre de la Cite. Book Reviews Important new material for both studies comes from the archives of the Berliner Ensemble and from personal interviews carried out by both scholars. John Fuegi spoke to Helene Weigel, Brecht's widow and the administrator of the Berliner Ensemble, to Angelika HUlwicz. the actress taken from Julius Hay's Haben to become Kattrin in the 1949 Mother Courage, and Grusche in the ]953- 4 The Caucasian Chalk Circle, to Elisabeth Hauptmann, Brecht's collaborator and assistant, and to Hans Bunge. Pia Kleber read 32 newspaper reviews of the Besson mise en scene. studied Karl Von Appen's designs, numerous production photographs, and the unpUblished Modellbuch. She interviewed Ekkehard SchaU, who played Sun in the Besson production, and the stage designer Friedrich Dieckmann. Although the T,N,P. has little archival materialthe reason being that Planchon believes stage art to be evanescent - Dr. KJeber was able to reconsbUct various phases ofthe three productions by discussing them with members of the T.N.P.: the dramaturg Michel Bataillon, the administrator Madeleine Sarrazin, the painter-designer Rene Allio; the actress/costume designer Isabelle Sadoyan, and a number of actors. What is perhaps essential for a proper appreciation of Dr. Kleber's study is to know that she started her professional life in Europe as a costume designer. Therefore, the technical expertise she brings to her detailed and very revealing discussion of the props, sets, costumes, and lighting used by Besson and Planchon is invaluable for students of stage craft. In addition to a fme literary sense and a historical perspective, Pia Kleber's specialized knowledge lends subtlety and depth to her analysis of Brecht's theory and praxis, and to Planchon's evolving fidelity to both. Both studies transcend their goals, emerging as treatises in comparative literature and comparative theatre. John Fuegi's original and sound use of the "hobby horse theory of mimesis" (p. 30) fonnulated by the aesthetician E.H. Gombrich in his essay "Meditations on a Hobby Horse," goes a long way towards an investigation of the controversial V-Effect. Although Fuegi says that he has no proof that Brecht was familiar with Gombrich, the reading of...

Walter Benjamin and the Theory of Art History

Walter Benjamin's influence on the theory and practice of art history in the English-speaking world has grown substantially in recent years, largely as a result of the increasing availability of his work in translation. But because the art-historical reception of Benjamin has focused primarily on the essays dealing with photography and film, it has largely failed to recognize that Benjamin's texts on the theory of mimesis, on the epistemology of form and perception, and, above all, on the philosophy of history are also of tremendous significance for the history of art.' Indeed, as evidenced by many of Benjamin's works, ranging from the (unfortunately still untranslated) Begrif der Kunstkritik in der deutschen Romantik (The Concept of Art Criticism in German Romanticism) to his posthumously published magnum opus, the Passagen-Werk (Arcades Project),2 the practice of a certain kind of art historyunderstood in a broad sense as the critical, sympto-

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

From Aristotelean mimesis to ‘bourgeois’ realism

The paper reconstructs, by way of conceptual analysis, the theories of Mimesis and Realism and argues for a clearer distinction between the two. The Greek concept of mimesis denotes the representative nature of aesthetic works: images, plots and characters follow the same schema as real objects, actions or persons, they are oriented towards reality, even though they are imaginary and not part of a reality context. Mimesis does not denote a particular - realistic - mode of representation, as distinct from other, non-realistic ones, it is a feature of all art works. The same holds true for the formula ‘imitation of nature’ which contains, however, an aesthetic imperative: that writers and artists limit themselves to the description of what is ‘probable’ and do not challenge the existent social and moral order. The emergence of the theory of realism in the 19th century is the result of fundamental social and epistemological changes, manifested above all in the breakdown of the strict feudal order and the formation of bourgeois society with its positivist ideology. After a transitional period which challenges the aesthetics of imitation and redefines the concepts of ‘nature’ and ‘poetic truth’, the realists develop an aesthetic programme which clearly sets itself off from romantic idealism and demands the truthful representation of reality through the method of observation, objectivity and contemporaneity. The new conception of reality is instilled also by a growing social consciousness: but it is this aspect of bourgeois realism which most clearly reveals its limitations and which has since been attacked by the more radical aesthetic theorists of the 20th century.

Mimesis and Genre Theory in Aristotle's Poetics

Mimesis and Genre Theory in Aristotle's Poetics

On the Margins of Discourse: The Relation of Literature to Language

Barbara Smith's book may be viewed as a contribution to general theory of mimesis, including mimesis but not limited to it. The key to her revision of mimetic theory is notion of adumbrated in her Poetic Ctosure (1968) and developed here in a series of essays ranging from an examination of Nelson Goodman's Languages of Art to a comprehensive review of Roger Fowler's Style and Structure in Literature, in which she demolishes with amusing verve pretensions of the new stylistics. As usual, Smith's work is well informed, elegant, and remarkably lucid. Fictive discourse, as defined by Smith, imitates or represents not battles, quests, trials of adolescence, or even the life of mind, as traditional mimetic theory suggests, but rather discowurse. Fictive discourse is a simulacrum of discourse, latter including utterances ... that can be taken as someone's saying something, somewhere, sometime, that is, as verbal acts of real persons on particular occasions in response to particular sets of circumstances (p. 15). A novel-for example, Tom Jones-thus represents not adventures of its eponymous hero but rather a biography of a real person with that name. Similarly, David Copperfield represents a natural autobiographical narrative, while lyric poetry typically represents not a written artifact but a spoken utterance: a lover's complaint to his mistress, or a reflective man's verbal response to view of Dover beach, sea, and French coast light on a particular moonlit evening. Whereas discourse is by definition assumed to have occurred in a particular historical context which determines its meaning, fictive discourse is assumed not to have occurred at all and in that sense its meaning is not context-dependent in same way. This view has important implications for literary criticism and theory. Smith proposes to abandon search for a formal distinction between literature and nonliterature (or literary and nonliterary language) in favor of a functional distinction between ways of taking or construing utterances or texts. The latter distinction cuts across that between literature and nonliterature (since fictive discourse may include kinds of discourse not considered literary: logicians' examples, proverbs, quotations, etc.) and thus offers a new way of conceiving relation between different kinds of discourse. Since fictive discourse is not taken to have been really said on a particular occasion by someone who meant what he said, it is a mistake not only to assume that it is author's discourse but also to assume that it is historically determined at all in usual sense. In case of Hamlet, for example, the composition of play... was a historically determinate event, but events represented in play are historically indeterminate. This means, among other things, that when we ask why Hamlet abuses Ophelia in nunnery scene, we do not expect to find answer in any historical particulars of life of William

Plotinus's Theory of Mimesis, and Its Implications for the Actual Composing of Music

Plotinus's Theory of Mimesis, and Its Implications for the Actual Composing of Music

"Young Goodman Brown" and Hawthorne's Theory of Mimesis

"Young Goodman Brown" and Hawthorne's Theory of Mimesis

"Young Goodman Brown" and Hawthorne's Theory of Mimesis

Research Article| March 01 1969 "Young Goodman Brown" and Hawthorne's Theory of Mimesis Taylor Stoehr Taylor Stoehr Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Nineteenth-Century Fiction (1969) 23 (4): 393–412. https://doi.org/10.2307/2932681 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Taylor Stoehr; "Young Goodman Brown" and Hawthorne's Theory of Mimesis. Nineteenth-Century Fiction 1 March 1969; 23 (4): 393–412. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/2932681 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentNineteenth-Century Literature Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1969 By The Regents of the University of California Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.