Although Aristotle acknowledges that arts are "acquired by practice," he does not theorize about imitation (243-4). "All of the subsequent major classical rhetoricians--Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Longinus, Cicero, and Quintilian--recommended the practice of imitation." The Ad Herrenium, among others, says that "oratorical skills are acquired by three means--theory, imitation, and practice" (243). Imitation is a means of "assimilating techniques" (244).1
[2] Aristotle, in contrast, regards mimesis as a "representation of a significant action" (5-6). Aristotle's author is a conduit of "impersonal truth," a point of view adapted by contemporary Marxist and Lukasian criticism (6).
Imitation + inspiration: "Within an emergent Christian culture . . . the notion of inspiration was reconciled with that of autonomous truth via the notion of auctoritas or authority derived from God. Inspiration thus [came] to be seen as the direct revelation of Scriptural truth from God to the Evangelists through the Church Fathers who assembled the Biblical canon. The Scriptural authors or auctores were thus granted the charisma of divinely-revealed truth which at the same time prescribed against any sense of individual originality." Thus, as A.J. Minnis explains, the name of the medieval author functioned not to identify the individual "empirical self" but to certify "religious authority." "Minnis provides compelling evidence against the assumption that the author is a relatively modern category of thought and locates its emergence in the thirteenth-century shift from an allegorical to a literal interpretation of the Bible" (7).2
2. Aesthetic mimesis: Art's imitation of life or nature (116). "Here photographic detail is not so important as an imitation of the spirit, passions, and essential nature of life in such a way that the product seems real in itself" (116-17).
3. Metaphysical mimesis: "The concept of imitation was extended by Plato and the Neoplatonists to describe the relationship between our physical and visible world of change and the unchanging world of metaphysical reality or ultimate being. Life as we know it imitates the forms and the idea of the Good" (117).4
FOOTNOTES
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Edward P.J. Corbett:
"The three meanings of mimesis most familiar to teachers of English are (1) the Platonic notion of an image-making faculty which produces extensions of ideal truth in the phenomenal world, (2) the Aristotelian notion of the representation of human actions, and (3) the rhetorical notion of copying, aping, simulating, emulating models." Sean Burke:
"The oldest conceptions of authorship view literature as either an imitative or an inspirational discourse" (5). Imitative theory in classical thought gives little consideration to "authorial inventiveness" (6), instead depicting "the artist as a copyist of reality" or "refer[ring] to the author's place within a literary tradition" (5). a. The "copyist of reality":
[1] Plato describes "the artist copying a natural world which was itself a copy of the higher realm of Ideas" (5). Plato's attitude toward this sort of imitation is apparently conflicted: In the Republic he would bar poets from the city-state because they can imitate only the sensory world--whereas the philosopher strives toward ideal Truth. "On the other hand, in Ion he seems to bestow upon poetic discourse a semi-divine status." Here the poet seems more the Aristotelian conduit of impersonal truth, for Plato's Socrates tells Ion that the poet is the passive agent of "a divine power" (6). Recent criticism has speculated that this is meant ironically, whereas earlier criticism took the "exuberant" tack of taking it seriously (6-7). "The reservations which Plato expresses about poetry stem in part from his conviction that the higher truth of the Forms is only attainable through disinterested rational enquiry. The realm of truth Plato believed to be autonomous, independent of human agency and quite distinct from the frenzies of poetic inspiration which substitute temporary aesthetic pleasure for the arduous acquisition of philosophical knowledge. Plato thus sharply demarcated between the modes of philosophical and literary authorship so as to banish the latter in favour of the former" (7).
b. "The author's place within a literary tradition: Aristotle's Poetics prescribes methods for imitation that emphasize the artist's working within a tradition, a point of view adapted by Russian formalism ("the author as craftsperson") and by structuralism ("the writer as an impersonal assembler and arranger of literary codes") (6). Sir Philip Sidney "invokes Aristotle" to turn the tables on Plato, ascribing the revelation of truth to the poet rather than the philosopher (8). George E. Rowe:
"Classical and Renaissance discussions of imitation fall into three basic categories. The first, which is of little interest here, defines imitation as copying or following a model as accurately as possible. A second and much more influential approach describes it as an endeavor not to reproduce a model exactly but to transform that model in a manner suited to the imitator's personality and situation. Seneca is the major classical exponent of this viewpoint. . . ." (13). "The third approach to imitation . . . defined imitation as an endeavor to compete with and surpass a model rather than merely alter it. . . . . Its earliest known proponent is Hesiod. . . ." (14). "Quintilian, however, was probably the most influential classical advocate of this viewpoint" (14-15).3 George A. Kennedy:
Ways in which the Greeks understood mimesis: 1. "Dramatic imitation": mimicking an action or person (116);
1. Corbett, Edward P.J. "The Theory and Practice of Imitation in Classical Rhetoric." College Composition and Communication 22 (1971): 243-50. Back
2. Burke, Sean. Authorship: From Plato to the Postmodern. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1995. Back
3. Rowe, George E. Distinguishing Jonson: Imitation, Rivalry, and the Direction of a Dramatic Career. Lincoln: U Nebraska P, 1988. Back
4. Kennedy, George A. Classical Rhetoric and Its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1980. Back