LEC 5104 Critical Transactions:Aristotle to Eliot

MIMESIS

Submitted to,

Dr.SHALINI

Dept of English and Comparative Literature

Submitted by,

ATHIRA R

Ist MA

English and Commparative Literature

Central University, Kerala

INTRODUCTION

Literature combines with variety of ideas. And most of them form from an idea which has been experienced earlier. Here mimesis is an important word to be discussed. Mimesis basically means imitation. And this is something which has not been noted earlier, but which was and is being really used by any authors.

‘Mimesis’ is a Greek word meaning imitation. It describes the relationship between the artistic images and reality. We can find any art form been imitated from a reality. So it is a copy of reality. And we can find the relationship between a real object and the art produced based on it. It describes between artistic images and reality. Art is copy of real. On historical contexts, mimesis takes on different guises, masquerading under a variety of related terms and translations, emulations, mimicry, dissimulation, doubling, theatricality, realism, identification, correspondence, depiction, verisimilitude and resemblance.

Writers like Plato and Aristotle have their views on mimesis which they have expressed. In his theory of mimesis, Plato says that all art is mimetic by nature and art is an imitation of life. In his way of thinking idea is the ultimate reality. He takes a chair and carpenter as examples. He says that the idea of chair first came in the mind of carpenter. He gave the physical shape to his idea out of wood and created a chair. The painter imitated the chair of the carpenter in his picture of chair. Thus, painter’s chair is twice removed from reality. He gives first importance to philosophy as philosophy deals with the ideas whereas poetry deals with illusion, things which are twice removed from reality. So to Plato, philosophy is superior to poetry. Plato rejected poetry as it is mimetic in nature on the moral and philosophical grounds. On the contrary, Aristotle advocated poetry as it is mimetic in nature. According to him, poetry is an imitation of an action and his tool of enquiry is neither philosophical nor moral. He examines poetry as a piece of art and not as a book of preaching or teaching.

PLATO

As literary critics, Plato and Aristotle disagree profoundly about the value of art in human society. Plato tries to strip the artists of power and prominence they enjoy in the society. While Aristotle tries to develop a method of inquiry to determine the merits of an individual work of art. But both have the same concluding factor that art is a form of mimesis, imitation. Both Plato and Aristotle convey the art is a product of mimesis.

They both are concerned with the artist’s ability to have significant impact on others. It is the imitative function of art which promotes disdain in Plato and curiosity in Aristotle. Examining the reality that art professes to imitate, the process of imitation, and the inherent strengths and weaknesses of imitation as a form of artistic expression may lead to understanding how these conflicting views of art could develop from a seemingly similar premise.

Plato has written in two works on mimesis. That is ian and the republic. In Ian, the states poetry is art of divine madness, or inspiration. Because the poet is subject to this madness, instead of possessing “art” or “knowledge” of the subject, the poet does not speak truth. As Plato has it only truth is the concern of the philosopher. As culture in those days did not consist in the solitary reading in those books, but in the listening to performances, the recitals of orators and poets, or the acting out by the classical actors of tragedy, Plato maintained in his critique that theatre was not sufficient in conveying the truth. He was concerned that actors or orators were thus able to persuade an audience by rhetoric rather than by telling the truth.

In book 2 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.

So the artist's bed is twice removed from the truth. The copier’s 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 or 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.

ARISTOTLE

Aristotle replied to the charges made by his Guru Plato against poetry in particular and art in general. He replied to them one by one in his defenses of poetry.

Plato says that art being the imitation of the actual is removed from the Truth. It only gives the likeness of a thing in concrete, and the likeness is always less than real. But Plato fails to explain that art also gives something more which is absent in the actual. The artist does not simply reflect the real in the manner of a mirror. Art cannot be slavish imitation of reality. Literature is not the exact reproduction of life in all its totality. It is the representation of selected events and characters necessary in a coherent action for the realization of the artist’s purpose. He even dignifies, idealizes and imaginatively recreates a world which has its own meaning and beauty. These elements, present in art, are absent in the raw and rough real. While a poet creates something less than reality he at the same times creates something more as well. He puts an idea of the reality which he perceives in an object. This ‘more’, this intuition and perception, is the aim of the artist. Artistic creation cannot be fairly criticized on the ground that it is not the creation in concrete terms of things and beings. Thus considered, it does not take us away from the Truth but leads us to the essential reality of life.

Plato again says that art is bad because it does not inspire virtue, does not teach morality. But is teaching the function of art and does it aim the artist? The function of art is to provide aesthetic delight, communicate experience, express emotions and represent life. It should never be confused with the function of ethics which is simply to teach morality. If an artist succeeds in pleasing us in the aesthetic sense, he is a good artist. If he fails in doing so, he is a bad artist. R.A.Scott -James (British journalist) observes: “Morality teaches. Art does not attempt to teach. It merely asserts it is thus or thus that life is perceived to be. That is my bit of reality, says the artist. Take it or leave it – draw any lessons you like from it – that is my account of things as they are – if it has any value to you as evidence of teaching, use it, but that is not my business: I have given you my rendering, my account, my vision, my dream, my illusion – call it what you will. If there is any lesson in it, it is yours to draw, not mine to preach.” Similarly, Plato’s charges on needless lamentations and ecstasies at the imaginary events of sorrow and happiness encourage the weaker part of the soul and numb the faculty of reason. These charges are defended by Aristotle in his Theory of Catharsis. David Daiches summarizes Aristotle’s views in reply to Plato’s charges in brief: “Tragedy (Art) gives new knowledge, yields aesthetic satisfaction and produces a better state of mind.”

Plato judges poetry now from the educational standpoint, now from the philosophical one and then from the ethical one. But he does not care to consider it from its own unique standpoint. He does not define its aims. He forgets that everything should be judged in terms of its own aims and objectives, its own criteria of merit and demerit. We cannot fairly maintain that music is bad because it does not paint, or that painting is bad because it does not sing. Similarly, we cannot say that poetry is bad because it does not teach philosophy or ethics. If poetry, philosophy and ethics had identical function, how could they be different subjects? To denounce poetry because it is not philosophy or ideal is clearly absurd.

Though both critics use the word mimetic to describe art, the definition derived by each philosopher is profoundly different. In order to construct a coherent, wide-ranging philosophy, art and its impact on society must be reckoned with, whether as an imitation of a system far removed or a system in our midst. The process of imitation is used in both cases to promote the particular version of reality espoused by each man. While such a study is beneficial in tracing the philosophical conflict regarding the usage and importance of imitation in art, what is most apparent, perhaps, is the discovery that language itself is an imperfect imitation of meaning, capable of fostering such conflicts.

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 middlingdeparture 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:

The 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.

Elizabeth Belfiore of University of Minnesota comments on Plato’s discussion of imitation in Republic 10 as it was called as self-contradictory or at least inconsistent with the treatment of mimesis m Republic 3. It is argued for example, that while Republic 3 banishes only some imitative poetry, Republic 10 opens with the statement that all imitative poetry has been exclusive from the ideal state, but then nevertheless allows some forms of imitation, namely hymns and encomia. Others claim that Plato fails to define important terms, such as “imitation” means impersonation in Republic 3, but representation in Republic 10. The most extreme position is that Plato has no coherent concept of the imitation he attacks, but simply strings together a series of bad arguments.

CONCLUSION

The term mimesis has long been used to refer to the relationship between an image and its ‘real’ original. However, recent theorists have problemized and extended the concept, allowing new perspectives on such key concerns as the nature of identity.

The mimetic theories judge a literary work of art in terms of imitation. This is the earliest way of judging any work of art in relation to reality whether the representation is accurate (verisimilitude) or not. For this purpose, all these theories treat a work of art as photographic reproduction i.e. art’s truth to life, poetic truth and so forth. This model undoubtedly started from Plato and runs through a great many theorists of the Renaissance up to some modern theorists as well.

Some critics or philosophers consider the external objects as a world of mere appearences. Plato is the founder of this consideration. He locates reality in ‘ideas’ or ‘forms’ rather than in the world of appearances. Therefore, his group of thinkers is the ‘idealist’ one. Some others, Aristotle primarily, believe that a form manifests itself through the concrete and the it means takes meaning with ordered principles. The poet imitates a form of nature and reshapes it and thus he is both an imitator and a creator. Mimetic thinkers can be grouped as ‘idealists’ in Platonic thinking and ‘mimetic’ in Aristotelian way.

Aristotle and his fellow thinkers is in line with him in the sense that they also feel that a poet takes form from nature and reshapes on ordered principles; he is an imitator and a creator, and his work ‘art’ is an improvement on nature. Plotinus, who emphasizes on intellectual beauty, and advocates for imitation and expressiveness, considers that the artist imposes on his material and he is the creator of vehicles of valuable spiritual insights. Art for him is an emanation from the ultimately unknowable one, god, intellect and its knowledge, and all souls and beauty in imitation are unknowable closer to the original.