Mimetic contagion : art and artifice in Terence's Eunuch / Robert Germany.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Germany, Robert, author.

Series:

Oxford studies in ancient culture and representation

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Terence. Eunuchus.

Terence.

Latin drama (Comedy)--History and criticism.

Latin drama (Comedy).

Imitation in literature.

Eunuchus (Terence).

Physical Description:

vi, 198 pages : illustrations ; 26 cm.

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford, United Kingdom : Oxford University Press, 2016.

Summary:

When we are confronted with a work of art, what is its effect on us? In contrast to post-Enlightenment conceptions, which tend to restrict themselves to aesthetic or discursive responses, the ancient Greeks and Romans often conceived works of art as having a more dynamic effect on their viewers, inspiring them to direct imitation of what they saw represented. This notion of 'mimetic contagion' was a persistent and widespread mode of framing response to art across the ancient world, discernible in both popular and elevated cultural forms, yet deployed differently in various historical contexts; it is only under the specificity of a particular cultural moment's concerns that it becomes most useful as a lens for understanding how that culture is attempting to negotiate the problems of representation. After framing the phenomenon in terms general enough to be applicable across many periods, literary genres, and artistic media, this volume takes a particular literary work, Terence's Eunuch, as a starting point, both as a vivid example of this extensive pattern, and as a case study situating use of the motif within the peculiarities of a particular historical moment, in this case mid-second-century BC Rome and its anxieties about the power of art. One of the features of mimetic contagion frequently noted in this study is its capacity to render the operation of a particular work of art an emblem for the effect of representation more generally, and this is certainly the case in the Eunuch, whereby the painting at the centre of the play functions as a metatheatrical figure for the dynamics of mimesis throughout, illustrating how the concept may function as the key to a particular literary work. Although mimetic contagion is only one available Greco-Roman strategy for understanding the power of art, by offering an extended reading of a single work of literature through this lens, this volume demonstrates what ramifications closer attention to it might have for modern readers and literary criticism. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Judging Chaerea: The Role of the Painting 28

2 Quickening Images: Mimetic Contagion in Cultic and Erotic Art 49

3 Lifelike Likeness: Mimetic Contagion in the Philosophical Tradition 72

4 Mimetic Contagion in Terence's Rome 95

5 Mimic Rape: Genre Switching and Role Confusion 120

6 The Poetics of Contamination 157.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 183-195) and index.

ISBN:

9780198738732

0198738730

OCLC:

952384381

Publisher Number:

99970408263