Mimesis: Culture-Art-Society / Edition 1

by Gunter Gebauer, Christoph Wulf, Don Reneau

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520084599
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	01/30/1996
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	(w) x (h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

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

Editorial Reviews

Published in conjunction with a traveling exhibition of the same name, organized by the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Abundant color photos accompany information-packed text covering the biology and evolution of whales, dolphins, and porpoises; the challenges of research; conservation; and whales and people--Greek and Minoan civilizations, the Tlingit, 19th-century New England, and the Eskimo. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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