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Romantic theories of art and literature, the notion of mimesis—defined
as art's reflection of the external world—became introspective and
self-reflexive as poets and artists sought to represent the act of
creativity itself. Frederick Burwick seeks to elucidate this Romantic
aesthetic, first by offering an understanding of key Romantic mimetic
concepts and then by analyzing manifestations of the mimetic process
in literary works of the period.
Burwick explores the mimetic concepts of "art for art's sake,"
"Idem et Alter," and "palingenesis of mind as art" by drawing on
the theories of Philo of Alexandria, Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, Friedrich
Schiller, Friederich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, Thomas De Quincey,
and Germaine de Staël. Having established the philosophical
bases of these key mimetic concepts, Burwick analyzes manifestations
of mimesis in the literature of the period, including ekphrasis
in the work of Thomas De Quincey, mirrored images in the poems of
Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, and the twice-told
tale in the novels of Charles Brockden Brown, E. T. A. Hoffmann,
and James Hogg. Although artists of this period have traditionally
been dismissed in discussions of mimesis, Burwick demonstrates that
mimetic concepts comprised a major component of the Romantic aesthetic. |
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