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Full Description
Since Plato's Republic, mimesis — the artwork's 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 subject's sensory entwinement with those objects. This new understanding can, in turn, more closely illuminate an artwork's own reflections on its relationship to the world, shedding light on the entanglements and crossovers between Romanticism and Realism.
Contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Notes on Abbreviations and Translations
Introduction: Balzac and Hoffman
I: Mimesis
1. Mimesis and the Chiasm
2. A Brief History of Undulating Lines
II: Lines
3. Arabesque: Der goldne Topf and La Peau de chagrin
4. Scribble: Der Artushof and Le Chef-d'oeuvre inconnu
5. Cross: Die Elixiere des Teufels and L'Élixir de longue vie
Conclusion: Fiction's Pretexts
Bibliography
Index
