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John D. Lyons and Stephen G. Nichols,
Jr., eds. Mimesis: From Mirror to Method,
Augustine to Descartes
Critical Studies in the Humanities
Mimesis: From Mirror to Method,
Augustine to Descartes is a
critical collection focusing on the intersections of art, history,
literature, philosophy, and theory. It is this fifth term, “theory,”
that marked the volume’s significance during the early 1980s—a time
of heightened conflict over the newly emerging role of “theory” in
the humanities. As Stephen G. Nichols notes in his new preface,
“[s]ince so much poststructuralist thought has focused on
representation, it was natural, if not inevitable, for scholars
involved in the project to turn to mimesis, representation as
imitation, for a concept that bridged the historical and the
contemporary.” This, of course, has not been the first time that
mimesis has played a key role in “bridging” an intellectual divide.
The onto-theological dimension of Medieval thought brings together
the Judeo-Christian Creator and the Platonic-Aristotelian
metaphysics of Being as just one instance of the importance of
mimesis in conjoining philosophical divisions. From Eugene Vance’s
exploration of Augustine’s metaphysics to Timothy J. Reiss’s
discussion of representation and modern political theory, Mimesis
offers a truly interdisciplinary and wide-ranging historical inquiry
into a foundational concept in the arts, literature, and philosophy.
First published in an era in which “theory” was portrayed as the
antithesis of humanistic study, this collection provides a necessary
account of a new synthesis of the humanities and theoretical
inquiry. With the persisting tensions within the humanities now over
the future of theory, Mimesis: From Mirror to Method, Augustine
to Descartes recaptures a critical element in this long debate,
providing a sophisticated analysis of mimesis and demonstrating a
unique theoretical method of scholarship.
Contents
Retrospective Preface
Introduction
Eugene Vance, Saint
Augustine: Language as Temporality
Stephen G. Nichols,
Jr., Romanesque Imitation or Imitating the Romans?
Kevin Brownlee,
Reflections in the Miroër aus Amoreus: The Inscribed Reader
in
Jean de Meun’s Roman de la Rose
Marina Scordilis
Brownlee, Autobiography as Self-(Re)presentation: The Augustinian
Paradigm and Juan Ruiz’s Theory of Reading
Robert Hollander,
Imitative Distance: Boccaccio and Dante
Nancy J. Vickers,
The Body Re-membered: Petrarchan Lyric and the
Strategies of
Description
Murray Krieger,
Presentation and Representation in the Renaissance Lyric:
The Net of
Words and the Escape of the Gods
Thomas M. Greene,
Erasmus’s “Festina lente”: Vulnerabilities of the
Humanist Text
Terence Cave, The
Mimesis of Reading in the Renaissance
John D. Lyons,
Speaking in Pictures, Speaking of Pictures: Problems of
Representation
in the Seventeenth Century
Michel Beaujour,
Speculum, Method, and Self-Portrayal: Some Epistemological Problems
Juan Bautista
Avalle-Arce, Novelas ejemplares: Reality, Realism, Literary
Tradition
Timothy J. Reiss,
Power, Poetry, and the Resemblance of Nature
Contributors
Notes
Index
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