The Imitative Representation of Nature and Human Behavior in Art and Literature Is Called What

Communication past means of false

Mimesis (;^[1] Ancient Greek: μίμησις, mīmēsis) is a term used in literary criticism and philosophy that carries a wide range of meanings, including imitatio, imitation, nonsensuous similarity, receptivity, representation, mimicry, the act of expression, the human activity of resembling, and the presentation of the cocky.^[2]

The original Ancient Greek term mīmēsis ( μίμησις ) derives from mīmeisthai ( μιμεῖσθαι , 'to imitate'), itself coming from mimos (μῖμος, 'imitator, thespian'). In aboriginal Greece, mīmēsis was an idea that governed the creation of works of art, in detail, with correspondence to the physical world understood every bit a model for beauty, truth, and the adept. Plato contrasted mimesis, or faux, with diegesis, or narrative. After Plato, the meaning of mimesis eventually shifted toward a specifically literary function in ancient Greek society.^{[ citation needed ]}

I of the best-known modern studies of mimesis—understood in literature every bit a grade of realism—is Erich Auerbach's Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, which opens with a comparison between the manner the world is represented in Homer'southward Odyssey and the way information technology appears in the Bible.^[three]

In addition to Plato and Auerbach, mimesis has been theorised by thinkers as various as Aristotle, Philip Sidney, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Adam Smith, Gabriel Tarde, Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Paul Ricœur, Luce Irigaray, Jacques Derrida, René Girard, Nikolas Kompridis, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Michael Taussig, Merlin Donald, and Homi Bhabha.^{[ citation needed ]}

Classical definitions [edit]

Plato [edit]

Both Plato and Aristotle saw in mimesis the representation of nature, including human being nature, as reflected in the dramas of the menstruation. Plato wrote near mimesis in both Ion and The Republic (Books II, 3, and X). In Ion, he states that verse is the fine art of divine madness, or inspiration. Considering the poet is discipline to this divine madness, instead of possessing 'art' or 'knowledge' (techne) of the subject,^[i] the poet does not speak truth (as characterized by Plato's account of the Forms). As Plato has information technology, truth is the concern of the philosopher. As culture in those days did non consist in the solitary reading of books, merely in the listening to performances, the recitals of orators (and poets), or the interim out by classical actors of tragedy, Plato maintained in his critique that theatre was not sufficient in conveying the truth.^[ii] He was concerned that actors or orators were thus able to persuade an audience by rhetoric rather than by telling the truth.^[iii]

In Volume II of The Democracy, Plato describes Socrates' dialogue with his pupils. Socrates warns nosotros should non seriously regard poetry equally existence capable of attaining the truth and that we who heed to poetry should exist on our guard against its seductions, since the poet has no place in our idea of God.^{[iv] : 377}

Developing upon this in Book X, Plato told of Socrates' metaphor of the three beds: 1 bed exists as an thought made by God (the Platonic platonic, or class); one is made by the carpenter, in imitation of God's idea; and one is fabricated past the creative person in simulated of the carpenter's.^{[five] : 596–9}

So the artist'south bed is twice removed from the truth. Those who copy only touch on a small part of things as they actually are, where a bed may appear differently from various points of view, looked at obliquely or straight, or differently again in a mirror. So painters or poets, though they may pigment or describe a carpenter, or any other maker of things, know nothing of the carpenter's (the craftsman'southward) art,^[5] and though the improve painters or poets they are, the more faithfully their works of art volition resemble the reality of the carpenter making a bed, yet the imitators volition still non accomplish the truth (of God'south cosmos).^[v]

The poets, commencement with Homer, far from improving and educating humanity, exercise not possess the knowledge of craftsmen and are mere imitators who re-create again and again images of virtue and rhapsodise about them, simply never attain the truth in the way the superior philosophers do.

Aristotle [edit]

Like to Plato'south writings almost mimesis, Aristotle too defined mimesis as the perfection, and imitation of nature. Art is non simply imitation just also the use of mathematical ideas and symmetry in the search for the perfect, the timeless, and contrasting being with condign. Nature is full of modify, disuse, and cycles, but art can also search for what is everlasting and the first causes of natural phenomena. Aristotle wrote about the idea of four causes in nature. The get-go, the formal cause, is like a blueprint, or an immortal idea. The 2d crusade is the cloth cause, or what a thing is fabricated out of. The 3rd cause is the efficient cause, that is, the process and the amanuensis by which the thing is made. The 4th, the terminal cause, is the skillful, or the purpose and end of a thing, known every bit telos.

Aristotle's Poetics is often referred to as the counterpart to this Platonic conception of poetry. Poetics is his treatise on the subject field of mimesis. Aristotle was not against literature every bit such; he stated that man beings are mimetic beings, feeling an urge to create texts (fine art) that reflect and correspond reality.

Aristotle considered it important that there be a certain altitude betwixt the work of art on the ane mitt and life on the other; we draw knowledge and alleviation from tragedies only because they do not happen to us. Without this distance, tragedy could non give rise to catharsis. However, information technology is every bit important that the text causes the audience to identify with the characters and the events in the text, and unless this identification occurs, it does non impact u.s. as an audience. Aristotle holds that it is through "simulated representation," mimesis, that we respond to the acting on the stage, which is conveying to us what the characters feel, and then that nosotros may empathise with them in this way through the mimetic form of dramatic roleplay. It is the job of the dramatist to produce the tragic enactment to attain this empathy past means of what is taking place on phase.

In short, catharsis can only be achieved if we see something that is both recognisable and distant. Aristotle argued that literature is more interesting every bit a ways of learning than history, because history deals with specific facts that have happened, and which are contingent, whereas literature, although sometimes based on history, deals with events that could take taken place or ought to have taken place.

Aristotle thought of drama as being "an imitation of an action" and of tragedy as "falling from a higher to a lower estate" and so being removed to a less platonic situation in more tragic circumstances than before. He posited the characters in tragedy as being better than the average man existence, and those of comedy as beingness worse.

Michael Davis, a translator and commentator of Aristotle writes:

At start glance, mimesis seems to be a stylizing of reality in which the ordinary features of our globe are brought into focus by a certain exaggeration, the relationship of the imitation to the object it imitates being something similar the relationship of dancing to walking. False always involves selecting something from the continuum of experience, thus giving boundaries to what really has no starting time or finish. Mimêsis involves a framing of reality that announces that what is contained inside the frame is non simply real. Thus the more "real" the faux the more fraudulent it becomes.^[4]

Contrast to diegesis [edit]

It was too Plato and Aristotle who contrasted mimesis with diegesis (Greek: διήγησις). Mimesis shows, rather than tells, by means of directly represented activeness that is enacted. Diegesis, all the same, is the telling of the story by a narrator; the author narrates action indirectly and describes what is in the characters' minds and emotions. The narrator may speak as a item character or may be the "invisible narrator" or even the "all-knowing narrator" who speaks from above in the form of commenting on the action or the characters.

In Book Iii of his Republic (c. 373 BC), Plato examines the way of poetry (the term includes one-act, tragedy, epic and lyric verse):^[vi] all types narrate events, he argues, only by differing means. He distinguishes betwixt narration or report (diegesis) and imitation or representation (mimesis). Tragedy and comedy, he goes on to explain, are wholly imitative types; the dithyramb is wholly narrative; and their combination is found in epic poetry. When reporting or narrating, "the poet is speaking in his own person; he never leads us to suppose that he is anyone else;" when imitating, the poet produces an "assimilation of himself to another, either by the use of voice or gesture."^[vii] In dramatic texts, the poet never speaks straight; in narrative texts, the poet speaks as himself or herself.^[5]

In his Poetics, Aristotle argues that kinds of poesy (the term includes drama, flute music, and lyre music for Aristotle) may exist differentiated in three ways: according to their medium, co-ordinate to their objects, and co-ordinate to their mode or manner (section I);^[viii] "For the medium existence the same, and the objects the aforementioned, the poet may imitate by narration—in which instance he tin either have another personality, as Homer does, or speak in his own person, unchanged—or he may nowadays all his characters every bit living and moving before u.s.a.."^[ix]

Though they excogitate of mimesis in quite different means, its relation with diegesis is identical in Plato'due south and Aristotle'south formulations.

In ludology, mimesis is sometimes used to refer to the self-consistency of a represented world, and the availability of in-game rationalisations for elements of the gameplay. In this context, mimesis has an associated grade: highly self-consequent worlds that provide explanations for their puzzles and game mechanics are said to display a higher degree of mimesis. This usage tin can be traced back to the essay "Crimes Against Mimesis".^[6]

Dionysian imitatio [edit]

Dionysian imitatio is the influential literary method of false as formulated by Greek author Dionysius of Halicarnassus in the 1st century BC, who conceived information technology as technique of rhetoric: emulating, adapting, reworking, and enriching a source text by an earlier author.^{[7] [8]}

Dionysius' concept marked a significant departure from the concept of mimesis formulated by Aristotle in the quaternary century BC, which was simply concerned with "imitation of nature" rather than the "imitation of other authors."^[7] Latin orators and rhetoricians adopted the literary method of Dionysius' imitatio and discarded Aristotle's mimesis.^[7]

Modern usage [edit]

Samuel Taylor Coleridge [edit]

Referring to information technology as imitation, the concept of mimesis was crucial for Samuel Taylor Coleridge's theory of the imagination. Coleridge begins his thoughts on imitation and poetry from Plato, Aristotle, and Philip Sidney, adopting their concept of fake of nature instead of other writers. His difference from the earlier thinkers lies in his arguing that art does not reveal a unity of essence through its power to reach sameness with nature. Coleridge claims:^[nine]

[T]he limerick of a verse form is amongst the imitative arts; and that simulated, every bit opposed to copying, consists either in the interfusion of the Same throughout the radically DIFFERENT, or the different throughout a base radically the same.

Here, Coleridge opposes imitation to copying, the latter referring to William Wordsworth'southward notion that poetry should indistinguishable nature by capturing actual speech. Coleridge instead argues that the unity of essence is revealed precisely through different materialities and media. False, therefore, reveals the sameness of processes in nature.

Erich Auerbach [edit]

Ane of the all-time-known modern studies of mimesis—understood in literature every bit a form of realism—is Erich Auerbach'south Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, which opens with a famous comparing betwixt the style the globe is represented in Homer's Odyssey and the way it appears in the Bible. From these two seminal texts—the onetime being Western and the latter having been written by various Middle Eastern writers—Auerbach builds the foundation for a unified theory of representation that spans the entire history of Western literature, including the Modernist novels being written at the time Auerbach began his report.^[3]

Walter Benjamin [edit]

In his essay, "On The Mimetic Faculty"(1933) Walter Benjamin outlines connections between mimesis and sympathetic magic, imagining a possible origin of astrology arising from an interpretation of homo nascency that assumes its correspondence with the apparition of a seasonally rising constellation augurs that new life will take on aspects of the myth connected to the star.^[x]

Luce Irigaray [edit]

Belgian feminist Luce Irigaray used the term to draw a grade of resistance where women imperfectly imitate stereotypes most themselves to betrayal and undermine such stereotypes.^[11]

Michael Taussig [edit]

In Mimesis and Alterity (1993), anthropologist Michael Taussig examines the way that people from one culture prefer another'due south nature and civilization (the process of mimesis) at the aforementioned time as distancing themselves from it (the process of alterity). He describes how a legendary tribe, the "White Indians" (the Guna people of Panama and Colombia), have adopted in various representations figures and images reminiscent of the white people they encountered in the by (without acknowledging doing and then).

Taussig, nonetheless, criticises anthropology for reducing yet another culture, that of the Guna, for having been so impressed by the exotic technologies of the whites that they raised them to the status of gods. To Taussig this reductionism is doubtable, and he argues this from both sides in his Mimesis and Alterity to see values in the anthropologists' perspective while simultaneously defending the independence of a lived culture from the perspective of anthropological reductionism.^[12]

René Girard [edit]

In Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (1978), René Girard posits that human behavior is based upon mimesis, and that imitation can engender pointless conflict. Girard notes the productive potential of competition: "Information technology is considering of this unprecedented capacity to promote competition within limits that e'er remain socially, if non individually, adequate that we have all the amazing achievements of the modern globe," only states that competition stifles progress in one case it becomes an end in itself: "rivals are more apt to forget about whatever objects are the crusade of the rivalry and instead become more fascinated with ane another."^[13]

Roberto Calasso [edit]

In The Unnameable Present, Calasso outlines the way that mimesis, called "Mimickry" by Joseph Goebbels—though it is a universal human power—was interpreted by the 3rd Reich as beingness a sort of original sin attributable to "the Jew." Thus, an objection to the tendency of human beings to mimic one another instead of "merely being themselves" and a complementary, fantasized want to accomplish a return to an eternally static pattern of predation past means of "will" expressed as systematic mass-murder became the metaphysical argument (underlying circumstantial, temporally contingent arguments deployed opportunistically for propaganda purposes) for perpetrating the Holocaust amongst the Nazi elite. Insofar every bit this issue or this purpose was ever even explicitly discussed in impress by Hitler'southward inner-circle, in other words, this was the justification (actualization in the essay "Mimickry" in a war-fourth dimension volume published past Joseph Goebbels).^{[xiv] [15]} The text suggests that a radical failure to understand the nature of mimesis every bit an innate homo trait or a violent disfavor to the aforementioned, tends to exist a diagnostic symptom of the totalitarian or fascist character if it is not, in fact, the original unspoken occult impulse that animated the production of totalitarian or fascist movements to brainstorm with.

Calasso's statement here echoes, condenses and introduces new testify to reinforce i of the major themes of Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of the Enlightenment (1944), ^[16] which was itself in dialog with earlier piece of work hinting in this direction by Walter Benjamin who died during an effort to escape the gestapo.^{[10] [17]} Calasso insinuates and references this lineage throughout the text. The piece of work can be read as a clarification of their earlier gestures in this direction, written while the Holocaust was still unfolding.

Calasso'south earlier volume The Celestial Hunter, written immediately prior to The Unnamable Present, is an informed and scholarly speculative cosmology depicting the possible origins and early prehistoric cultural development of the human mimetic faculty.^[xviii] In particular, the books starting time and fifth chapters ("In The Time of the Corking Raven" and "Sages & Predators") focuses on the terrain of mimesis and its early origins, though insights in this territory announced as a motif in every chapter of the book.^[19]

Encounter as well [edit]

• Similarity (philosophy)

References [edit]

Classical sources [edit]

1. ^ Plato, Ion, 532c
2. ^ Plato, Ion, 540c
3. ^ Plato, Ion, 535b
4. ^ Plato, Commonwealth, Book Ii, translated past B. Jowett.
5. ^ ^{a b c} Plato, Democracy, Book X, translated by B. Jowett.
6. ^ Plato, The Republic, Book Iii, translated past B. Jowett. (Too bachelor via Project Gutenberg):

   You lot are aware, I suppose, that all mythology and poetry is a narration of events, either by, present, or to come? / Certainly, he replied.
   And narration may be either unproblematic narration, or simulated, or a matrimony of the 2? / [...] / And this absorption of himself to another, either by the use of vocalism or gesture, is the faux of the person whose character he assumes? / Of course. / Then in this case the narrative of the poet may be said to proceed by way of faux? / Very true. / Or, if the poet everywhere appears and never conceals himself, then once more, the imitation is dropped, and his verse becomes simple narration.

7. ^ Plato, 360 BC, The Republic, Book 3, translated by B. Jowett. (As well available via Project Gutenberg).
8. ^ Aristotle, Poetics § I
9. ^ Aristotle, Poetics § Three

Citations [edit]

1. ^ Wells, John C. (2008), Longman Pronunciation Dictionary (3rd ed.), Longman, ISBN9781405881180
2. ^ Gebauer and Wulf (1992, ane).
3. ^ ^{a b} Auerbach, Erich. 1953. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Princeton: Princeton Academy Printing. ISBN 0-691-11336-X.
4. ^ Davis (1993, 3).
5. ^ See as well, Pfister (1977, pp. 2–3); and Elam (1980):

   "classical narrative is always oriented towards an explicit at that place and then, towards an imaginary 'elsewhere' fix in the past and which has to be evoked for the reader through predication and description. Dramatic worlds, on the other hand, are presented to the spectator every bit 'hypothetically actual' constructs, since they are 'seen' in progress 'here and at present' without narratorial mediation. [...] This is not merely a technical distinction but constitutes, rather, 1 of the cardinal principles of a poetics of the drama as opposed to one of narrative fiction. The distinction is, indeed, implicit in Aristotle's differentiation of representational modes, namely diegesis (narrative description) versus mimesis (direct imitation)." (pp. 110–1).

6. ^ Giner-Sorolla, Roger (April 2006). "Crimes Against Mimesis". Archived from the original on 19 June 2005. Retrieved 17 December 2006. This is a reformatted version of a set of manufactures originally posted to Usenet:
   • Giner-Sorolla, Roger (eleven Apr 2006). "Crimes Against Mimesis, Office 1". Retrieved 17 December 2006.
   • Giner-Sorolla, Roger (18 Apr 2006). "Crimes Against Mimesis, Part two". Retrieved 17 December 2006.
   • Giner-Sorolla, Roger (25 Apr 2006). "Crimes Against Mimesis, Part 3". Retrieved 17 December 2006.
   • Giner-Sorolla, Roger (29 April 2006). "Crimes Confronting Mimesis, Role 4". Retrieved 17 December 2006.
7. ^ ^{a b c} Ruthven (1979) pp. 103–iv
8. ^ Jansen (2008)
9. ^ Coleridge, Samuel T. [1817] 1983. Biographia Literaria, vol. i, edited by J. Engell and Westward. J. Bate. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-09874-three. p. 72.
10. ^ ^{a b} Benjamin, Walter (1986). Reflections : essays, aphorisms, autobiographical writing. Peter Demetz. New York: Schocken Books. pp. 333–335. ISBN0-8052-0802-X. OCLC 12805048.
11. ^ See [one].
12. ^ Taussig, 1993, pp. 47–48.
13. ^ Girard, René (1987). Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World. Stanford University Printing. pp. 7, 26, 307.
14. ^ Calasso, Roberto (2019). The unnamable present. Richard Dixon. New York. pp. 148–155. ISBN978-0-374-27947-9. OCLC 1036096585.
15. ^ Goebbels, Joseph (1941). "Mimicry". research.calvin.edu . Retrieved iv November 2021. {{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
16. ^ Adorno, Theodor (1944). Dialectic of Enlightenment. Verso. pp. 9–xx et al. ISBNi-78478-680-2. OCLC 957655599.
17. ^ Benjamin, Walter (1968). Illuminations. Hannah Arendt. New York: Schocken Books. pp. 141–147, 217–265. ISBN0-8052-0241-2. OCLC 12947710.
18. ^ "The Celestial Hunter past Roberto Calasso review – the sacrificial society". the Guardian. 9 May 2020. Retrieved 4 November 2021.
19. ^ Calasso, Roberto (2020). The angelic hunter. Richard Dixon. New York. pp. 3–28, 97–156. ISBN978-0-374-12006-one. OCLC 1102184868.

Bibliography [edit]

• Auerbach, Erich . 1953. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature . Princeton: Princeton UP. ISBN 0-691-11336-X.
• Coleridge, Samuel T. 1983. Biographia Literaria, vol. 1, edited by J. Engell and Westward. J. Bate. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Upwardly. ISBN 0-691-09874-three.
• Davis, Michael. 1999. The Verse of Philosophy: On Aristotle's Poetics . Southward Curve, IN: St Augustine's P. ISBN 1-890318-62-0.
• Elam, Keir. 1980. The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama , New Accents series. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-416-72060-ix.
• Gebauer, Gunter, and Christoph Wulf. [1992] 1995. Mimesis: Civilisation—Fine art—Club , translated by D. Reneau. Berkeley, CA: U of California Press. ISBN 0-520-08459-4.
• Girard, René. 2008. Mimesis and Theory: Essays on Literature and Criticism, 1953–2005, edited by R. Doran. Stanford: Stanford University Printing. ISBN 978-0-8047-5580-ane.
• Halliwell, Stephen. 2002. The Aesthetics of Mimesis. Ancient Texts and Modern Problems . Princeton. ISBN 0-691-09258-3.
• Kaufmann, Walter . 1992. Tragedy and Philosophy . Princeton: Princeton UP. ISBN 0-691-02005-one.
• Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe. 1989. Typography: Mimesis, Philosophy, Politics, edited past C. Fynsk. Cambridge: Harvard Upwardly. ISBN 9780804732826.
• Lawtoo, Nidesh. 2013. The Phantom of the Ego: Modernism and the Mimetic Unconscious. Due east Lansing: Michigan State UP. ISBN 9781611860962.
• Miller, Gregg Daniel. 2011. Mimesis and Reason: Habermas's Political Philosophy. Albany, NY: SUNY Printing. ISBN 978-i-4384-3740-8
• Pfister, Manfred. [1977] 1988. The Theory and Analysis of Drama , translated past J. Halliday, European Studies in English Literature series. Cambridige: Cambridge UP. ISBN 0-521-42383-Ten.
• Potolsky, Matthew. 2006. Mimesis. London: Routledge. ISBN 0415700302.
• Prang, Christoph. 2010. "Semiomimesis: The influence of semiotics on the creation of literary texts. Peter Bichsel'due south Ein Tisch ist ein Tisch and Joseph Roth'southward Hotel Savoy." Semiotica (182):375–96.
• Sen, R. 1000. 1966. Aesthetic Enjoyment: Its Groundwork in Philosophy and Medicine. Calcutta: University of Calcutta.
• —— 2001. Mimesis. Calcutta: Syamaprasad Higher.
• Sörbom, Göran. 1966. Mimesis and Fine art . Uppsala.
• Snow, Kim, Hugh Crethar, Patricia Robey, and John Carlson. 2005. "Theories of Family unit Therapy (Part 1)." Equally cited in "Family Therapy Review: Preparing for Comprehensive Licensing Examination." 2005. Lawrence Erlbaum Assembly. ISBN 0-8058-4312-4.
• Tatarkiewicz, Władysław . 1980. A History of Half dozen Ideas: An Essay in Aesthetics , translated by C. Kasparek . The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. ISBN xc-247-2233-0.
• Taussig, Michael . 1993. Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses . London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-90686-5.
• Tsitsiridis, Stavros. 2005. "Mimesis and Agreement. An Interpretation of Aristotle'south 'Poetics' 4.1448b4-19." Classical Quarterly (55):435–46.

External links [edit]

Look up mimesis in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Plato's Commonwealth II, transl. Benjamin Jowett
• Plato's Republic Iii, transl. Benjamin Jowett
• Plato's Republic Ten, transl. Benjamin Jowett
• The Space Regress of Forms Plato's recounting of the "bedness" theory involved in the bed metaphor
• The University of Chicago, Theories of Media Keywords
• University of Barcelona Mimesi (Enquiry on Poetics & Rhetorics in Catalan Literature)
• Mimesislab, Laboratory of Education of Expression of the Department of Educational Design of the academy "Roma Tre"
• "Mimesis", an article by Władysław Tatarkiewicz for the Lexicon of History of Ideas
• "Mimesis", 2021, an article past María Antonia González Valerio for the Online Encyclopedia Philosophy of Nature, doi: https://doi.org/10.11588/oepn.2019.0.79538.

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimesis

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