Mimesis - Culture, Art, Society (Paper)

1. Auflage 1996
ISBN: 978-0-520-08459-9
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, 400 Seiten, Trade Paperback, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 558 g

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, Molière, 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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Gebauer, Gunter

Wulf, Christoph

Weitere Mitwirkende

Reneau, Don

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunst, allgemein Kunsttheorie, Kunstphilosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Ästhetik
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. Point of Departure On Auerbach's History of Mimesis Worldmaking and Social Pressure Literary and Social Mimesis

Part I. Mimesis as Imitation, the Production of Appearances, and Fiction
2. On the Origins of the Concept
3. Imitation, Illusion, Image (Plato) Similarity, Imitation, Education Appearance and lllusion Images as Appearances with the Character of Similarity
4. The Break in the History of Mimesis: The Use of Writing Oral Poetry Between Oral and Literate Culture
5. Poetic Mimesis (Aristotle)

Part II. Mimesis as lmitatio, the Expression of Power, and Literate Subjectivity
6. Mimesis as lmitatio
7. Poetics and Power in the Renaissance
8. lntertextuality, Fragmentation, Desire: Erasmus, Montaigne, Shakespeare

Part III. Mimesis as Enactment of the State
9. The Conflict Over History: The Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes On the History of the Conflict Racine and Moliere Structural Results
10. Mimesis as the Self-Representation of Political Power The Portrait of the King On the Dramatic Practice of French Classicism The Representation of Daily Life in Comedy
11. Against Mimesis as Self-Representation The Critique of Self-Representation in Madame de Lafayette Negative Anthropology Two Attempts to Transcend Mimesis

Part IV. From Imitation to the Constitution of the Creative Subject
12. Problems in the Imitation of Nature in the Eighteenth Century
13. Mimesis in the Theater of the Enlightenment
14. Diderot's Paradox of Acting
15. The Transformation of Mimesis in Lessing Lessing's Argument
16. Self-Mimesis (Rousseau) Self-Formation Pedagogy and Seduction

Part V. Mimesis as the Principle of Worldmaking in the Novel and Society
17. The Mimetic Constitution of Social Reality Images of a Society Balzac's Illusions perdues 225
18. "Mimetic Desire" in the Work of Girard
19. Violence in Antiromantic Literature The Authorial I and Others The Relationships of I and Other in the Novel Language, Violence, and the Internal Perspective
20. The Mimesis of Violence (Girard)

Part VI. Mimesis as Entree to the World, Language, and Writing
21. Nonsensuous Similarity: On the Linguistic Anthropology of Benjamin
22. Vital Experience (Adorno)
23. The Between-Character of Mimesis (Derrida)

Results

Historical Positions of Mimesis
The Dimensions of Mimesis

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Gunter Gebauer and Christoph Wulf are Professors in the Center for Historical Anthropology at the Free University of Berlin and the authors of several works of literary and cultural criticism. Don Reneau is a translator and writer in Berkeley, California.