The aesthetics of mimesis : ancient texts and modern problems
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Bibliographic Information
The aesthetics of mimesis : ancient texts and modern problems
Princeton University Press, c2002
- : pbk
- : hbk
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Note
Bibliography: p. [383]-417
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Mimesis is one of the oldest, most fundamental concepts in Western aesthetics. This book offers a new, searching treatment of its long history at the center of theories of representational art: above all, in the highly influential writings of Plato and Aristotle, but also in later Greco-Roman philosophy and criticism, and subsequently in many areas of aesthetic controversy from the Renaissance to the twentieth century. Combining classical scholarship, philosophical analysis, and the history of ideas - and ranging across discussion of poetry, painting, and music - Stephen Halliwell shows with a wealth of detail how mimesis, at all stages of its evolution, has been a more complex, variable concept than its conventional translation of "imitation" can now convey. Far from providing a static model of artistic representation, mimesis has generated many different models of art, encompassing a spectrum of positions from realism to idealism. Under the influence of Platonist and Aristotelian paradigms, mimesis has been a crux of debate between proponents of what Halliwell calls "world-reflecting" and "world-simulating" theories of representation in both the visual and musico-poetic arts.
This debate is about not only the fraught relationship between art and reality but also the psychology and ethics of how we experience and are affected by mimetic art. Moving expertly between ancient and modern traditions, Halliwell contends that the history of mimesis hinges on problems that continue to be of urgent concern for contemporary aesthetics.
Table of Contents
Preface vii Acknowledgments xi Note to the Reader xiii INTRODUCTION: Mimesis and the History of Aesthetics 1 PART I CHAPTER ONE Representation and Reality: Plato and Mimesis 37 CHAPTER TWO Romantic Puritanism: Plato and the Psychology of Mimesis 72 CHAPTER THREE Mimesis and the Best Life: Plato's Repudiation of the Tragic 98 CHAPTER FOUR More Than Meets the Eye: Looking into Plato's Mirror 118 PART II CHAPTER FIVE Inside and Outside the Work of Art: Aristotelian Mimesis Reevaluated 151 CHAPTER SIX The Rewards of Mimesis: Pleasure, Understanding, and Emotion in Aristotle's Aesthetics 177 CHAPTER SEVEN Tragic Pity: Aristotle and Beyond 207 CHAPTER EIGHT Music and the Limits of Mimesis: Aristotle versus Philodemus 234 PART III CHAPTER NINE Truth or Delusion?The Mimeticist Legacy in Hellenistic Philosophy 263 CHAPTER TEN Images of Life: Mimesis and Literary Criticism after Aristotle 287 CHAPTER ELEVEN Renewal and Transformation: Neoplatonism and Mimesis 313 CHAPTER TWELVE An Inheritance Contested: Renaissance to Modernity 344 Bibliography 383 Index 419
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