A Short History of Outlooks on Mimesis

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Abstract

Mimetic theory, since the time of ancient Greek philosophers, has been the concern of thinkers, artists, poets and literary critics. Introduced by Democritus, the theory found a philosophical character in the works of Socrates. Aristotle and Plato, in their turns, presented different interpretations of mimesis, and Plotinus gave his own synthesis of it. In the Middle Ages, this topic became stagnant in the West, but Muslim thinkers such as Fārābi, Khāje Nasir, Ibn Roshd and Ibn Sinā, revived the idea of mimesis, enriching it with the achievements of Islamic culture. Since Rennaissance, thanks to the translations of the Muslim philosophers, the Western critics got interested once more in this theory. Mimesis theory, because of its very evolution, has been a matter of different studies in the area of philosophy and literature.

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