due Feb 1 (2 pm Eastern standard time)

Does art imitate life? Can life imitate art? What is Mimesis?

Below are several definitions of mimesis. Watch/read them in order and then write your own definition based on what you understood. Don’t write a summary of these definitions. Bring any questions to class. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHNNgygzgUI 2. Mimesis, basic theoretical principle in the creation of art. The word is Greek and means “imitation” (though in the sense of “re-presentation” rather than of “copying”). Plato and Aristotle spoke of mimesis as the re-presentation of nature. According to Plato, all artistic creation is a form of imitation: that which really exists (in the “world of ideas”) is a type created by God; the concrete things man perceives in his existence are shadowy representations of this ideal type. Therefore, the painter, the tragedian, and the musician are imitators of an imitation, twice removed from the truth. Aristotle, speaking of tragedy, stressed the point that it was an “imitation of an action”—that of a man falling from a higher to a lower estate. Shakespeare, in Hamlet’s speech to the actors, referred to the purpose of playing as being “…to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature.” Thus, an artist, by skillfully selecting and presenting his material, may purposefully seek to “imitate” the action of life. (http://www.britannica.com/art/mimesis) 3. More information on Mimesis according to Plato and Aristotle In his theory of Mimesis, Plato says that all art is mimetic by nature; art is an imitation of life. He believed that ‘ideas’ are the ultimate reality (if you forgot about the world of ideas/forms, review last week’s Plato handout). Art imitates an idea and so it is imitation of reality. 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 out of wood and created a chair. A painter imitated the chair of the carpenter in his picture of chair. Thus, painter’s chair is twice removed from reality. Hence, Plato believed that art is twice removed from reality. He gives first importance to philosophy as philosophy deals with ideas whereas poetry (poiesis means ‘making’ in Greek, so it means art in general) deals with illusion – things which are twice removed from reality. So to Plato, philosophy is superior to poetry. Plato rejected poetry because it is mimetic in nature on moral and philosophical grounds (i.e. for being too far removed from reality and the truth/for being an illusion). On the contrary, Aristotle advocated for poetry because it is mimetic in nature. According to him, poetry is an imitation of an action and his tool of inquiry is neither philosophical nor moral. He examines poetry as a piece of art and not as a book of preaching or teaching. (https://sites.google.com/site/nmeictproject/home/plato-s-theory-of-mimesis-and- aristotle-s-defence) Aristotle thinks that imitation is a deeply ingrained human proclivity. Like political association, he contends, mimêsis is natural. We engage in imitation from an early age, already in language learning by aping competent speakers as we learn, and then also later, in the acquisition of character by treating others as role models. In both these ways, we imitate because we learn and grow by imitation, and for humans, learning is both natural and a delight (Poet. 1148b4–24). This same tendency, in more sophisticated and complex ways, leads us into the practice of drama. As we engage in more advanced forms of mimêsis, imitation gives way to representation and depiction, where we need not be regarded as attempting to copy anyone or anything in any narrow sense of the term. For tragedy does not set out

merely to copy what is the case, but rather, as we have seen in Aristotle’s differentiation of tragedy from history, to speak of what might be, to engage universal themes in a philosophical manner, and to enlighten an audience by their depiction. So, although mimêsis is at root simple imitation, as it comes to serve the goals of tragedy, it grows more sophisticated and powerful, especially in the hands of those poets able to deploy it to good effect. (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle/) 4. Mimesis (imitation) Greek for “imitation.” In aesthetic theory, mimesis can also connote “representation,” and has typically meant the reproduction of an external reality, such as nature, through artistic expression. Plato disparaged mimesis for merely providing inferior copies of original forms; Aristotle, in his Poetics, recuperated the idea, alleging that mimesis is “natural” to humans. For Aristotle, mimesis in part both recreates the objects of reality and improves them; it provides humans with a special kind of symbolic order. In the 17th and 18th centuries, thinkers and writers such as Rousseau and Lessing began to emphasize the relationship between mimesis and inner experiences and emotions, not just objective reality or nature. By the 20th century, the term housed a number of theories, theorists, and schools of thought. Erich Auerbach’s highly influential book Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (1953) attempted to chart the history of culture through representational practices in literature. Thinkers such as Walter Benjamin and Theodore Adorno, on the other hand, described mimesis as fundamental to human experience, a practice that precedes language but is suppressed or distorted by society. Rather than mimesis as the process of reproducing copies of nature, reality, or experience, these theorists suggested that mimesis has to do with social practices and inter-subjective relationships. Jacques Derrida also claimed mimesis for deconstruction, focusing on texts as “doubled” objects, which can never refer to an original source. (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/glossary-term/mimesis (imitation))