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Mimesis

"Mimetic" redirects here. Not to be confused with Mimetic muscles, Memetics, or Mimetic theory.
For other uses, see Mimesis (disambiguation).

Mimesis (/mɪˈmiːsɪs, mə-, maɪ-, -əs/;[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 act of resembling, and the presentation of the self.[2]

The original Ancient Greek term mīmēsis (μίμησις) derives from mīmeisthai (μιμεῖσθαι, 'to imitate'), itself coming from mimos (μῖμος, 'imitator, actor'). In ancient Greece, mīmēsis was an idea that governed the creation of works of art, in particular, with correspondence to the physical world understood as a model for beauty, truth, and the good. Plato contrasted mimesis, or imitation, with diegesis, or narrative. After Plato, the meaning of mimesis eventually shifted toward a specifically literary function in ancient Greek society.[3]

One of the best-known modern studies of mimesis—understood in literature as a form of realism—is Erich Auerbach's Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, which opens with a comparison between the way the world is represented in Homer's Odyssey and the way it appears in the Bible.[4]

In addition to Plato and Auerbach, mimesis has been theorised by thinkers as diverse as Aristotle,[5] Philip Sidney, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Adam Smith, Gabriel Tarde, Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin,[6] Theodor Adorno,[7] Paul Ricœur, Luce Irigaray, Jacques Derrida, René Girard, Nikolas Kompridis, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Michael Taussig,[8] Merlin Donald, Homi Bhabha, Roberto Calasso, and Nidesh Lawtoo. During the nineteenth century, the racial politics of imitation towards African Americans influenced the term mimesis and its evolution.[9]

  1. ^ Wells, John C. (2008), Longman Pronunciation Dictionary (3rd ed.), Longman, ISBN 9781405881180
  2. ^ Gebauer and Wulf (1992, 1).
  3. ^ Halliwell, Stephen. "'The Shifting Problems of Mimesis in Plato' [Author's MS] in J. Pfefferkorn & A. Spinelli (eds.) Platonic Mimesis Revisited (Academia Verlag, 2021)". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  4. ^ Auerbach, Erich. 1953. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 069111336X.
  5. ^ Aristotle (1968). Poetics. D. W. Lucas. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0198141750. OCLC 3354067.
  6. ^ Benjamin, Walter (1970). "On the Mimetic Faculty". Illuminations. London: Cape. ISBN 0224618253. OCLC 10931256.
  7. ^ Horkheimer, Max (2002). Dialectic of enlightenment : philosophical fragments. Theodor W. Adorno, Gunzelin Schmid Noerr. Stanford, California. ISBN 978-0804788090. OCLC 919087055.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  8. ^ Taussig, Michael T. (1993). Mimesis and alterity : a particular history of the senses. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0415906865. OCLC 26719038.
  9. ^ Wilson, Kirt (2003). "The Racial Politics of Imitation in the Nineteenth Century". Quarterly Journal of Speech. 89 (2): 89–108. doi:10.1080/00335630308178. S2CID 144657276.