Mimesis Criticism

Mimesis criticism is a method of interpreting texts in relation to their literary or cultural models. Mimesis, or imitation (imitatio), was a widely used rhetorical tool in antiquity up until the 18th century's romantic emphasis on originality. Mimesis criticism looks to identify intertextual relationships between two texts that go beyond simple echoes, allusions, citations, or redactions. The effects of imitation are usually manifested in the later text by means of distinct characterization, motifs, and/or plot structure.

As a critical method, mimesis criticism has been pioneered by Dennis MacDonald, especially in relation to New Testament and other early Christian narratives imitating the "canonical" works of Classical Greek literature.

Greek rhetorician Aristotle (4th century b.c.e.) discusses the rhetorical technique of mimesis or imitation; what Aristotle describes, however, is the author's imitation of nature, not earlier literary or cultural models.

Philodemus of Gadara (1st century b.c.e.), an Epicurean philosopher and poet and one of Virgil's teachers, affirms that writers of prose histories and fictions used literary models. He writes (rhetorically) in book five of On Poetry, "Who would claim that the writing of prose is not reliant on the Homeric poems?" (5.30.36-31.)

A Greek historian and rhetorician from the late first century b.c.e./early first century c.e., Dionysius of Halicarnassus represents a change from the Aristotelian rhetorical notion of mimesis, from imitation of nature to imitation of literature. His most important work in this respect, On Mimesis (Περὶ μιμήσεως, Perì mimēseōs), survives only in fragments. Apparently, most of this work concerned the proper selection of literary models.

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