ASSIGNMENT
ON
MIMESIS
LCL051520
INTRODUCTION
Nature creates similarities. One need
only think of mimicry. The highest capacity for producing similarities,
however, is man’s. His gift of seeing resemblances is nothing other than
a rudiment of the powerful compulsion in former times to become and behave like
something else. Perhaps there is none of his higher functions in which
his mimetic faculty does not play a decisive role.
Walter Benjamin, On the Mimetic
Faculty (1933)
The Term Mimesis took back us to the Greek
critics Aristotle and Plato and opens a discourse on the poetry or literature
based on its contents that imitate human action and nature and represent these
things in a new medium. Mimesis is exactly meant that 'imitation' and the
widely used term 'mimesis' indicate its 'Greekness' because it is originated
from Greek. The term used for first time is by Plato in his Republic (Books II,
III, and X) which designates “representation” in a broader sense (in his Ion also Plato
wrote about Mimesis). But around from the 6 BC the vocabulary of Mimesis
applied in both broader and narrower sense. At its beginning the term used as to
representation, depiction, expression in various area of literature even in
visual and musical. But later the “dramatic enactment” too added on it.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines mimesis
as "a figure of speech, whereby the words or actions of another are
imitated" and "the deliberate imitation of the behaviour of one group
of people by another as a factor in social change". However According to
Aristotle, similar to Plato, He defined mimesis as the perfection and imitation
of the nature. According to Plato, Aristotle, Oxford English Dictionary or any
other definition on Mimesis have the inevitable presence of the word
‘imitation’.
From its origin onwards mimesis employs with
various kinds of applications in many disciplines. This assignment is an attempt
to explore the history of mimesis and its application on the literary theory.
From Plato on wards the term handled
Mimesis
is considered as the oldest literary or artistic theory in the history of
literature. And it is considered as the most fundamental too. Mimesis can
determine the way of thinking about art, literature, and representation.
Mimesis describes relation between artistic images and reality; art is a copy
of real. It also describes things such as artworks, actions and imitating another
person. It imitate: nature, truth, beauty, mannerisms, actions, situations,
examples and ideas.
Mimesis possessed and repeated for thousand
years by artists and philosophers. But the truth is that all art is not
mimetic, but according to western culture art is inconceivable without the
theory of mimesis.
As we discussed before Plato introduced the
term in Republic. Art
is ‘merely’ imitates something real. He argues that it is an illusion thus it
needs to be distinguished from truth and nature.
Derrida has written:
The whole history of the interpretation of the
arts of letters has moved and been transformed within the diverse logical
possibilities opened up by the concept of ‘mimetics’ (Dissemination,1981:
187).
Western theories of artistic representation are
hard to understand without 'the Mimesis'.
Mimesis is always connected ideas about the
artistic representation in the area of literature rather than a theory of art
and images. Today the theory has influenced is psychology, anthropology,
educational theory, feminism, post-colonial studies, political theory as well
as literary and artistic theory. That means the mimesis and its theory well
rooted on literature since the ancient Greek (from Plato onwards).
The real fact is that, Mimesis need not reproduce
what actually is but it gives a lifelike pretence. On other hand it is not
'mirror' anything. This statement on mimesis considered as the first idea about
mimesis. And the second and most interesting idea (according to Aristotle, it
is considered as the first) is mimesis is the effective if it resonates with
basic cognitive operations. Which means mimesis is able to functioning
effectively when it is understand with the primary reasoning operations.
The second idea indicates about the
conventional beliefs of human being and society and how does it influences the
artworks through mimesis. The word 'convention' used to describe as the
unspoken rules which guide society and artistry.
Plato on
the theory of Mimesis
According to Plato in his theory of mimesis art
is mimetic by nature and it is an imitation of life. Plato considered that
‘idea’ is ultimate reality. Art can imitate idea therefore it is the imitation
of reality. For establish this theory of mimesis he gives an example of a
carpenter and a chair. The idea of ‘chair’ first came in the mind of carpenter.
He gave physical shape to his idea 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. Hence, he believed that art is twice removed from
reality.
There is no doubt why Plato is more comfortable
with philosophy because according to his theory on mimesis, philosophy deals
with 'ideas' and it is real whereas poetry deals with illusion – things
which are twice removed from reality. He viewed philosophy is better than
poetry because philosopher deals with idea or truth, whereas poet deals with
illusion. He believed that truth of philosophy was more important than the
pleasure of poetry. He argued that most of it should be banned from the ideal
society that he described in the Republic. So according Plato, philosophy is
better than poetry. This gives an aura of a philosopher for Plato.
Plato's problems with imitation such as
Epistemological (an imitation is at three removes from the reality or truth of
something), Theological (poets and other artists represent the gods in
inappropriate ways) and Moral and Psychological (A good imitation can undermine
the stability of even the best humans by making us feel sad, depressed, and
sorrowful about life itself) problems are defend by Aristotle.
Aristotle
on the Theory of Mimesis
Aristotle agrees with Plato
in calling the poet an imitator and creative art imitation. Aristotle believes
that imitation is in-born instinct in men and there is a natural pleasure in it.
In Aristotle's Poesis, the "natural" human inclination to imitate is
described as,
Inherent in man from his earliest days; he
differs from other animals in that he is the most imitative of all creatures,
and he learns his earliest lessons by imitation. Also inborn in all of us
is the instinct to enjoy works of imitation (Durix, Jean-Pierre. Mimesis,
Genres and Post-Colonial Discourse: 45)
Through poetics Aristotle reply to Plato
in order to defend mimesis. For Aristotle unlike Plato, mimesis is a mirror of
something else and therefore potentially deceptive. Mimesis is a craft with its
own laws and directions. The opening sentences of the Poetics establish this
premise:
I propose to treat of poetry in itself and of
its various kinds, noting the essential quality of each; to inquire into the
structure of the plot as requisite to a good poem; into the number and nature
of the parts of which a poem is composed; and similarly into whatever else
falls within the same inquiry. Following, then, the order of nature, let us
begin with the principles which come first. (Aristotle (1951), Aristotle’s
Theory of Poetry and Fine Art: 7)
For Aristotle the poem is much like a natural
object and he says that he will treat poetry 'in itself'. Aristotle used
metaphors in his poetics to stress the naturalness of mimesis. It defend the
metaphors of Plato (Mirrors, shadows, optical illusions) which highlight the
artificiality of art and literature. But Aristotle's metaphors are emphasizing
their similarity to natural objects. For example, he compares a plot and a body
(Good plots resemble a living organism in all unity and produce the pleasure
proper to it);
A very small animal organism cannot be
beautiful; for the view of it is confused, the object being seen in an almost
imperceptible moment of time. Nor again can one of vast size be beautiful; for
as the eye cannot take it all in at once, the unity and sense of the whole is lost
for the spectator (Aristotle (1951) Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine
Art: 89).
Aristotle's analyses on mimesis also occupy the
argument that art has a specific nature of its own. For Plato all forms and
types of literature such as poetry, painting, epic and tragedy are same. They
are essentially the same in their imitation of the real. But Aristotle
differentiates the arts by the materials they employ. Painters use figure and
colour but poets use rhythm, language and body. Each of these arts are mimetic.
But they imitate with different tools in different forms. Rather than
being an imitater, the artist is a maker, craftsman. He argues 'the
imitation that makes the poet, not the rhetorical form of the work' (Aristotle
(1951) Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art: 9).
Aristotle again defends another argument of
Plato. Plato was against the tragedies which he believes tragedies are harmful
for our rational thoughts and it is irrational. But for Aristotle it is
rational. However tragedy contains extreme emotions, irrational desires and
supernatural forces, good tragedies are constructed rationally and it
influences the audience in a positive manner. Aristotle argues the tragic
emotions are more predictable and reasonable .Aristotle begins his discussion
of tragedy with a definition:
Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action
that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished
with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate
parts of the play; in the form of action not narrative; through pity and fear
effecting the purgation of these emotions (Aristotle (1951) Aristotle’s
Theory of Poetry and Fine Art: 23)
His definition means that tragedy is the
mimesis of an action and that this action is complete and of a certain
magnitude. And he gives much more importance for Plot because plot is the
single most important element of tragedy: it is the ‘soul [psyche]’ of a
tragedy, the very seat of its rational faculties (Aristotle (1951) Aristotle’s
Theory of Poetry and Fine Art: 29).
Mimesis in Modern Theories
Empirically nature of the mimesis is bound to
the nature in the late 17th and 18th century conception
of the aesthetics. Aesthetic theory
emphasized the relationship of mimesis to artistic expression. . In
the writings of Lessing and Rousseau, there is a fixed direction from the
Aristotelian conception of mimesis as binding to the imitation of nature and a
move towards an assertion of individual creativity in which the productive
relationship of one mimetic world to another is renounced (Kelly, Michael, ed.
"Mimesis, the Encyclopaedia of Aesthetics, vol. 3. (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1998) 234).
Mimesis is the inevitable concept in S. T.
Coleridge's theory of imagination. He formulates his thoughts on imitation and
poetry from Plato, Aristotle, and Philip Sidney, by accepting their idea of
imitation of nature instead of other writers. Coleridge announces:
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.
(Biographia Literaria, 72)
On this statement Coleridge opposes mimesis
from a bare copying. Next he refers Wordsworth's idea of poetry that should
imitate nature by portraying actual speech.
Then Coleridge argues that the unity of
essence is unveiled clearly through different materialities and media.
Therefore Imitation reveals the uniformity of processes in nature.
When mimesis approaches to the 2oth
century writers like Walter Benjamin, Adorno, Girard and Derrida have defined
mimetic activity as it relates to social practice and impersonal relations
rather than its previous application in literature (as just a rational process of making and producing models that emphasize
the body, emotions, the senses, and temporality).
The return to a conception of mimesis as
a fundamental human property is visible in the writings of Walter Benjamin. He
supposes the mimetic faculty of humans is defined by representation and
expression.
"In this way language may be seen as the
highest level of mimetic behaviour and the most complete archive of
non-sensuous similarity: a medium into which the earlier powers of mimetic
production and comprehension have passed without residue, to the point where
they have liquidated those of magic”.(Walter Benjamin, Reflections. (New
York: Schocken Books, 1986) 336)
In Mimesis and Alterity Michael
Taussig discussed Mimesis centred around Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno’s
biologically determined model, in which mimesis is concluded as an adaptive
behaviour (prior to language) that allows humans to make themselves similar to
their surrounding environments through assimilation and play. Through physical and bodily acts of mimesis (i.e. the
chameleon blending in with its environment, a child imitating a windmill,
etc.), the distinction between the self and other becomes permiable and
flexible.
Derrida uses mimesis on related to the texts.
The mimetic text lacks an original model and its inherent intertextuality
demands deconstruction." Differénce is the principle of mimesis, a
productive freedom, not the elimination of ambiguity; mimesis contributes to
the profusion of images, words, thoughts, theories, and action, without itself
becoming tangible" (Kelly, 236).
CONCLUSION
Mimesis is an ancient Greek term which
originates from the word 'mīmeisthai' means 'to imitate'. It is a critical and
philosophical term which represent for a lot of ideas and concepts in it. it include
imitation, representation, mimicry, imitatio, receptivity, nonsensuous
similarity, the act of resembling, the act of expression, and the presentation
of the self.
Mimesis was appeared in Plato’s Republic (380
BC) and it developed through out in the history of literature. Plato confronts
the theory of mimesis in a pessimistic way. It was against his idea of the
ideal nation because mimesis is imitation (according to Plato it is twice
removed from reality). But his disciple Aristotle defends this theory on
mimesis. In simple words Art is imitation and that’s all right, even good. Every
human being learn things through imitation, it is inborn in every individual.
According to Aristotle tragedy can provide more insight for human than any
other kind of literature.
After Plato and Aristotle mimesis has been
theorised by many other thinkers as as Plato, Aristotle, Philip Sidney, Samuel
Taylor Coleridge, Walter Benjamin, Paul Ross, Theodor Adorno, Erich Auerbach,
Luce Irigaray, Jacques Derrida, René Girard, Michael Taussig . The research on this term is continuing in many
branches.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Potolsky, Matthew. Mimesis, New
Delhi: Routledge, 2006.
2. Aristotle, Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry
and Fine Art, trans. S. H. Butcher: New York: Dover, 1951
3. Derrida, Jacques. Dissemination:
University of Chicago Press 1981
4. Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis: The
Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Princeton:
Princeton UP, 1953
5. Abrams, Meyer Howard, and Geoffrey
Harpham. A glossary of literary terms, New York Cengage Learning,
2011.
5. Benjamin, Walter. Reflections, New
York: Schocken Books, 1986
6. Coleridge, S.T. Biographia
Literaria. James Engell and W. Jackson Bate, Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1983
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