Creative Thoughts

Summary #3

To Imitate or Not to Imitate

            In A Journal of the History of Rhetoric, Rhetorica, John Muckelbauer explores through evidence and other people analysis on “should we or should we not imitate?” and whom should we imitate?”  Muckelbauer believes that “it is not at all intuitive to link imitation and invention” together.  Others like Frank M. Farmer and Philip K. Arrignton believe that “imitation itself is caught up in the very logic of appearances that structures this opposition.”  Those appearances are shown in Nietzsche’s belief that God’s death doesn’t mean that God is over and done with.  However, if is God is over and done with, is a shadow is still shown? Muckelbauer says “shadows that are imitations of imitation.”  If people believe that imitation is dead, and we shouldn’t imitate other writers, or that imitating other authors isn’t even possible, is that shadow still there?

            Writers argue whether or not the shadow of imitation is only accounted for in the world of classical writing or in all writing done.  Edward P.J. Corbett summarizes three meanings of the word mimesis: “1) the Platonic notion of an image-making faculty which produces extensions of ideal truth in the phenomenal world, 2) the Aristotelian notion of the representation of human actions, and 3) the rhetorical notion of copying, aping, simulating, emulating models.”  Authors and rhetoricians believe that by dividing up these three summaries of mimesis, one can devise between imitation of the actual world and imitation of the ancient rhetoric. 

            All authors seem to agree to disagree whether or not imitation has been long gone and isn’t even in the world of rhetoric any longer.  While some believe that imitation is dead and can no longer be attained, others believe that there is definitely imitation, evidenced by “three basic components: a model (the subject of imitation), a copy (the product of imitation) and “some relation of likeness that obtains between them.”” Some argue that these three components can be bundled into a single component called repetition.  Repetition is where one author says one idea, and is repeated either word for word, or differently worded by other authors.  No matter what order the words come in, they are still the same words.  Some call this variation, so are repetition, variation, and imitation all the same thing? Some authors say yes, and some authors say no.

            Muckelbauer says everything that needs to be said about imitation in his last sentence: “Nevertheless, we can be certain that as long as imitative practices continue to be approached by emphasizing the type of model rather than by attending to the movement through which that model is encountered, the classical links between imitation and invention, and between repetition and variation, will remain as mystifying as they appear today.”  So, through all authors analysis of imitation, the question of “Should we or should we not imitate?” still thumps along……