Mimesis Quotes

• The oldest theory of art belongs to the Greeks, who regarded art as an imitation (mimesis) of reality. The strength of that theory is that it explains the way in which art takes its materials from real life.

  Leland Ryken

  Art, Real, Greek

  Leland Ryken (2011). “The Christian Imagination: The Practice of Faith in Literature and Writing”, p.60, Shaw Books

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• On this showing, the nature of the breakdowns of civilizations can be summed up in three points: a failure of creative power in the minority, an answering withdrawal of mimesis on the part of the majority, and a consequent loss of social unity in the society as a whole.

  Arnold J. Toynbee

  Loss, Civilization, Creative

  A Study of History (D. C. Somervell abridgement), bk. 4, ch. 13 (1947)

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• On the whole, dialogue is the most difficult thing, without any doubt. It's very difficult, unfortunately. You have to detach yourself from the notion of a lifelike quality. You see, actually lifelike, tape-recorded dialogue like this has very little to do with good novel dialogue. It's a matter of getting that awful tyranny of mimesis out of your mind, which is difficult.

  John Fowles

  Writing, Doubt, Mind

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• Mimesis has longevity on its side. But Oasis wrote two of the greatest pop songs of all time, each with lyrics that mean less and less the more you think about them. So I'm going to have to go with the Gallagher brothers.

  Matthew Zapruder

  Song, Brother, Mean

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Newness only becomes mere evil in its totalitarian format, where all the tension between individual and society, that once gave rise to the category of the new, is dissipated. Today the appeal to newness, of no matter what kind, provided only that it is archaic enough, has become universal, the omnipresent medium of false mimesis. The decomposition of the subject is consummated in his self-abandonment to an ever-changing sameness.

  Theodor Adorno

  Self, Evil, Matter

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.238, Verso

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• There is something thrilling in the mimesis of life's surprising unfolding.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Unfolding, Surprising, Thrilling

  "Writing Lessons From the Madly Prolific Joyce Carol Oates". Interview with Alexander Sammon, www.motherjones.com. September 10, 2016.

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• Our lazy embrace of Stewart and Colbert is a testament to our own impoverished comic standards. We have come to accept coy mockery as genuine subversion and snarky mimesis as originality. It would be more accurate to describe our golden age of political comedy as the peak output of a lucrative corporate plantation whose chief export is a cheap and powerful opiate for progressive angst and rage.

  Steve Almond

  Powerful, Political, Lazy

  "The Joke’s on You" by Steve Almond, The Baffler, No. 20, www.huffingtonpost.com. July 19, 2012.

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• The most prevalent poetic representation of contemporary experience is the mimesis of disorientation by non sequitor.

  Tony Hoagland

  Poetry, Literature, Poetic

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• Literature can no longer be either Mimesis or Mathesis but merely Semiosis, the adventure of what is impossible to language, in a word: Text (it is wrong to say that the notion of 'text' repeats the notion of 'literature': literature represents a finite world, the text figures the infinite of language).

  Roland Barthes

  Adventure, Literature, World

  Roland Barthes (1994). “Roland Barthes”

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