Platos Republic has faced attacks on mimesis, claiming it naturalizes the relationship between world and fiction. Lines of Mimesis offers a revisionary account, proposing a rethinking of the representational attitudes of Romanticism and Realism through close readings of writings and drawings by E. T. A. Hoffmann and Honoré de Balzac. Dickson argues that mimesis pertains to the negotiation of the subjects sensory entwinement with objects, illuminating an artworks reflections on its relationship to the world and shedding light on the entanglements and crossovers between Romanticism and Realism.

Format: Hardback
Length: 240 pages
Publication date: 30 June 2024
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Platos Republic,mimesis — the artworks tacit claim to reflect or imitate real life — has faced a near-constant stream of assaults,being accused of naturalising a supposedly uncomplicated relationship between world and fiction. Lines of Mimesis offers a revisionary account of mimesis. Specifically,it proposes a rethinking of the representational attitudes of two literary schools usually understood to be at odds with one another — Romanticism and Realism — through close readings of writings and drawings made by two figures usually taken to be proponents of those schools respectively: E. T. A. Hoffmann and Honoré de Balzac. Across these readings,Dickson argues that a more capacious understanding of mimesis is achieved when we understand it to pertain not to the reduplication of objects in the world,but to a negotiation of the subjects sensory entwinement with those objects. This new understanding can,in turn,more closely illuminate an artworks own reflections on its relationship to the world,shedding light on the entanglements and crossovers between Romanticism and Realism.

Platos Republic,mimesis — the artworks tacit claim to reflect or imitate real life — has faced a near-constant stream of assaults,being accused of naturalising a supposedly uncomplicated relationship between world and fiction.

Lines of Mimesis offers a revisionary account of mimesis. Specifically,it proposes a rethinking of the representational attitudes of two literary schools usually understood to be at odds with one another — Romanticism and Realism — through close readings of writings and drawings made by two figures usually taken to be proponents of those schools respectively: E. T. A. Hoffmann and Honoré de Balzac. Across these readings,Dickson argues that a more capacious understanding of mimesis is achieved when we understand it to pertain not to the reduplication of objects in the world,but to a negotiation of the subjects sensory entwinement with those objects. This new understanding can,in turn,more closely illuminate an artworks own reflections on its relationship to the world,shedding light on the entanglements and crossovers between Romanticism and Realism.

Weight: 514g
Dimension: 240 x 162 x 19 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781399506502