Mimesis (; Ancient Greek: μίμησις mīmēsis,
from μιμεῖσθαι mīmeisthai, "to
imitate", from μῖμος mimos, "imitator,
actor") is a critical and philosophical term
that carries a wide range of meanings, which
include imitation, representation, mimicry,
imitatio, receptivity, nonsensuous similarity,
the act of resembling, the act of expression,
and the presentation of the self.In ancient
Greece, mimesis 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, and its use has changed
and been reinterpreted many times since.
One of the best-known modern studies of mimesis,
understood as a form of realism in literature,
is Erich Auerbach's Mimesis: The Representation
of Reality in Western Literature, which opens
with a famous comparison between the way the
world is represented in Homer's Odyssey and
the way it appears in the Bible. From these
two seminal Western texts, 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 study. In art
history, "mimesis", "realism" and "naturalism"
are used, often interchangeably, as terms
for the accurate, even "illusionistic", representation
of the visual appearance of things.
Mimesis has been theorised by thinkers as
diverse as Plato, Aristotle, Philip Sidney,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Adam Smith, Gabriel
Tarde, Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin, Theodor
Adorno, Erich Auerbach, Paul Ricœur, Luce
Irigaray, Jacques Derrida, René Girard, Nikolas
Kompridis, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Michael
Taussig, Merlin Donald, and Homi Bhabha.
== Classical definitions ==
=== Plato ===
Both Plato and Aristotle saw in mimesis the
representation of nature, including human
nature, as reflected in the dramas of the
period. Plato wrote about mimesis in both
Ion and The Republic (Books II, III, and X).
In Ion, he states that poetry is the art of
divine madness, or inspiration. Because the
poet is subject to this divine madness, instead
of possessing "art" or "knowledge" – techne
– of the subject (532c), the poet does not
speak truth (as characterized by Plato's account
of the Forms). As Plato has it, truth is only
the concern of the philosopher. As culture
in those days did not consist in the solitary
reading of books, but in the listening to
performances, the recitals of orators (and
poets), or the acting out by classical actors
of tragedy, Plato maintained in his critique
that theatre was not sufficient in conveying
the truth (540c). He was concerned that actors
or orators were thus able to persuade an audience
by rhetoric rather than by telling the truth
(535b).
In Book II of The Republic, Plato describes
Socrates' dialogue with his pupils. Socrates
warns we should not seriously regard poetry
as being capable of attaining the truth and
that we who listen to poetry should be on
our guard against its seductions, since the
poet has no place in our idea of God.In developing
this in Book X, Plato told of Socrates' metaphor
of the three beds: one bed exists as an idea
made by God (the Platonic ideal, or form);
one is made by the carpenter, in imitation
of God's idea; one is made by the artist in
imitation of the carpenter's.So the artist's
bed is twice removed from the truth. Those
who copy only touch on a small part of things
as they really are, where a bed may appear
differently from various points of view, looked
at obliquely or directly, or differently again
in a mirror. So painters or poets, though
they may paint or describe a carpenter, or
any other maker of things, know nothing of
the carpenter's (the craftsman's) art, and
though the better painters or poets they are,
the more faithfully their works of art will
resemble the reality of the carpenter making
a bed, nonetheless the imitators will still
not attain the truth (of God's creation).The
poets, beginning with Homer, far from improving
and educating humanity, do not possess the
knowledge of craftsmen and are mere imitators
who copy again and again images of virtue
and rhapsodise about them, but never reach
the truth in the way the superior philosophers
do.
=== Aristotle ===
Similar to Plato's writings about mimesis,
Aristotle also defined mimesis as the perfection,
and imitation of nature. Art is not only imitation
but also the use of mathematical ideas and
symmetry in the search for the perfect, the
timeless, and contrasting being with becoming.
Nature is full of change, decay, 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 first, the formal cause, is
like a blueprint, or an immortal idea. The
second cause is the material cause, or what
a thing is made out of. The third cause is
the efficient cause, that is, the process
and the agent by which the thing is made.
The fourth, the final cause, is the good,
or the purpose and end of a thing, known as
telos.
Aristotle's Poetics is often referred to as
the counterpart to this Platonic conception
of poetry. Poetics is his treatise on the
subject of mimesis. Aristotle was not against
literature as such; he stated that human beings
are mimetic beings, feeling an urge to create
texts (art) that reflect and represent reality.
Aristotle considered it important that there
be a certain distance between the work of
art on the one hand and life on the other;
we draw knowledge and consolation from tragedies
only because they do not happen to us. Without
this distance, tragedy could not give rise
to catharsis. However, it is equally 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 not touch us 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, so that we may empathise
with them in this way through the mimetic
form of dramatic roleplay. It is the task
of the dramatist to produce the tragic enactment
in order to accomplish this empathy by means
of what is taking place on stage.
In short, catharsis can only be achieved if
we see something that is both recognisable
and distant. Aristotle argued that literature
is more interesting as a means 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 have
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 ideal situation in more tragic circumstances
than before. He posited the characters in
tragedy as being better than the average human
being, and those of comedy as being worse.
Michael Davis, a translator and commentator
of Aristotle writes:
==== Contrast to diegesis ====
It was also Plato and Aristotle who contrasted
mimesis with diegesis (Greek διήγησις).
Mimesis shows, rather than tells, by means
of directly represented action that is enacted.
Diegesis, however, 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 particular 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 BCE),
Plato examines the style of poetry (the term
includes comedy, tragedy, epic and lyric poetry):
All types narrate events, he argues, but by
differing means. He distinguishes between
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 any one else"; when
imitating, the poet produces an "assimilation
of himself to another, either by the use of
voice or gesture". In dramatic texts, the
poet never speaks directly; in narrative texts,
the poet speaks as himself or herself.In his
Poetics, Aristotle argues that kinds of poetry
(the term includes drama, flute music, and
lyre music for Aristotle) may be differentiated
in three ways: according to their medium,
according to their objects, and according
to their mode or manner (section I); "For
the medium being the same, and the objects
the same, the poet may imitate by narration—in
which case he can either take another personality,
as Homer does, or speak in his own person,
unchanged—or he may present all his characters
as living and moving before us" (section III).
Though they conceive of mimesis in quite different
ways, its relation with diegesis is identical
in Plato's and Aristotle's 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-consistent
worlds that provide explanations for their
puzzles and game mechanics are said to display
a higher degree of mimesis. This usage can
be traced back to the essay "Crimes Against
Mimesis".
=== Dionysian imitatio ===
Dionysian imitatio is the influential literary
method of imitation as formulated by Greek
author Dionysius of Halicarnassus in the 1st
century BCE, which conceived it as technique
of rhetoric: emulating, adaptating, reworking
and enriching a source text by an earlier
author.Dionysius' concept marked a significant
depart from the concept of mimesis formulated
by Aristotle's in the 4th century BCE, which
was only concerned with "imitation of nature"
instead of the "imitation of other authors".
Latin orators and rhetoricians adopted the
literary method of Dionysius' imitatio and
discarded Aristotle's mimesis.
== Samuel Taylor Coleridge ==
Mimesis, or imitation, as he referred to it,
was a crucial concept 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 imitation of nature instead
of other writers. His middling departure from
the earlier thinkers lies in his arguing that
art does not reveal a unity of essence through
its ability to achieve sameness with nature.
Coleridge claims:
[T]he composition of a poem is among the imitative
arts; and that imitation, as 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's
notion that poetry should duplicate nature
by capturing actual speech. Coleridge instead
argues that the unity of essence is revealed
precisely through different materialities
and media. Imitation, therefore, reveals the
sameness of processes in nature.
== Luce Irigaray ==
The Belgian feminist Luce Irigaray used the
term to describe a form of resistance where
women imperfectly imitate stereotypes about
themselves so as to show up these stereotypes
and undermine them.
== Michael Taussig ==
In Mimesis and Alterity (1993), the anthropologist
Michael Taussig examines the way that people
from one culture adopt another's nature and
culture (the process of mimesis) at the same
time as distancing themselves from it (the
process of alterity). He describes how a legendary
tribe, the "white Indians", or Cuna, have
adopted in various representations figures
and images reminiscent of the white people
they encountered in the past (without acknowledging
doing so).
Taussig, however, criticises anthropology
for reducing yet another culture, that of
the Cuna, 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 suspect, 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.
== René Girard ==
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: "It
is because of this unprecedented capacity
to promote competition within limits that
always remain socially, if not individually,
acceptable that we have all the amazing achievements
of the modern world," but states that competition
stifles progress once it becomes an end in
itself: "rivals are more apt to forget about
whatever objects are the cause of the rivalry
and instead become more fascinated with one
another."
== Notes ==
== References ==
Auerbach, Erich. 1953. Mimesis: The Representation
of Reality in Western Literature. Princeton:
Princeton UP. ISBN 0-691-11336-X.
Coleridge, S.T. 1983. Biographia Literaria.
v.1 eds. James Engell and W. Jackson Bate.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP. ISBN 0-691-09874-3.
Davis, Michael. 1999. The Poetry of Philosophy:
On Aristotle's Poetics. South Bend, Indiana:
St Augustine's P. ISBN 1-890318-62-0.
Elam, Keir. 1980. The Semiotics of Theatre
and Drama. New Accents Ser. London and New
York: Methuen. ISBN 0-416-72060-9.
Gebauer, Gunter, and Christoph Wulf. 1992.
Mimesis: Culture—Art—Society. Trans. Don
Reneau. Berkeley and London: U of California
P, 1995. ISBN 0-520-08459-4.
René Girard. 2008. Mimesis and Theory: Essays
on Literature and Criticism, 1953–2005.
Ed. by Robert Doran. Stanford: Stanford University
Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-5580-1.
Halliwell, Stephen, The Aesthetics of Mimesis.
Ancient Texts and Modern Problems, Princeton
2002. ISBN 0-691-09258-3.
Kaufmann, Walter. 1992. Tragedy and Philosophy.
Princeton: Princeton UP. ISBN 0-691-02005-1.
Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe. 1989. Typography:
Mimesis, Philosophy, Politics, ed. Christopher
Fynsk. Cambridge: Harvard UP. ISBN 9780804732826.
Lawtoo, Nidesh. 2013. The Phantom of the Ego:
Modernism and the Mimetic Unconscious. East
Lansing: Michigan State UP. ISBN 9781611860962.
Miller, Gregg Daniel. 2011. Mimesis and Reason:
Habermas's Political Philosophy. Albany, NY:
SUNY Press. ISBN 978-1-4384-3740-8
Pfister, Manfred. 1977. The Theory and Analysis
of Drama. Trans. John Halliday. European Studies
in English Literature Ser. Cambridige: Cambridge
UP, 1988. ISBN 0-521-42383-X.
Potolsky, Matthew. 2006. Mimesis. London:
Routledge. ISBN 0415700302.
Prang, Christoph. 2010. Semiomimesis: The
influence of semiotics on the creation of
literary texts. Peter Bichsel's Ein Tisch
ist ein Tisch and Joseph Roth's Hotel Savoy.
In: Semiotica. Vol. 2010, Issue 182, S. 375–96.
Sörbom, Göran, Mimesis and Art, Uppsala
1966.
Snow, Kim; Crethar, Hugh; Robey, Patricia
& Carlson, John. 2005. "Theories of Family
Therapy (Part 1)". As cited in "Family Therapy
Review: Preparing for Comprehensive Licensing
Examination." 2005. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
ISBN 0-8058-4312-4.
Sen, R. K., Mimesis, Calcutta: Syamaprasad
College, 2001
Sen, R. K., Aesthetic Enjoyment: Its Background
in Philosophy and Medicine, Calcutta: University
of Calcutta, 1966.
Tatarkiewicz, Władysław. 1980. A History
of Six Ideas: An Essay in Aesthetics. Trans.
Christopher Kasparek. The Hague: Martinus
Nijhoff. ISBN 90-247-2233-0.
Taussig, Michael. 1993. Mimesis and Alterity:
A Particular History of the Senses. London
and New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-90686-5.
Tsitsiridis, Stavros, "Mimesis and Understanding.
An Interpretation of Aristotle's Poetics 4.1448b4-19",
In: Classical Quarterly 55 (2005) 435-46.
== External links ==
Plato's Republic II, transl. Benjamin Jowell
Plato's Republic III, transl. Benjamin Jowell
Plato's Republic X, transl. Benjamin Jowell
INFINITE 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 (Research on
Poetics & Rhetorics in Catalan Literature)
Mimesislab, Laboratory of Pedagogy of Expression
of the Department of Educational Design of
the University "Roma Tre"
"Mimesis", an article by Władysław Tatarkiewicz
for the Dictionary of History of Ideas
