important details
I, no. 1 (June 1995)
Sacred Ambivalence: Mimetology in Aristotle, Horace, and Longinus
Matthew Schneider
Department of English
Chapman University
Orange CA 92666 schneide@nexus.chapman.edu Almost from its very beginnings mimetology has looked to ancient Greece for its proof texts. For both René Girard's hypotheses surrounding the ethical and ethnological implications of mimetic desire and Eric Gans's identification of the part played by mimetic resentment in cultural evolution, the texts of Homer and the tragedians have served (in the words of Walter Burkert) as "a mirror in which the basic orders of life, lying far behind us, become visible with an almost classical clarity" (xxiii).
For Burkert, this mirror's clarity is the product of ancient Greece's serendipitous "union of antiquity and sophistication" (xxiii). While mimetic theory has dwelt on the significances of Greek literary and religious traditions, the culture's sophistication--especially in matters critical and philosophical-- have received relatively scant notice. In light of the historical priority of the aesthetic over the theoretical, such inattention is understandable. This essay, however, will demonstrate how the writings of three of the classical age's most influential commentators on literary theory--Aristotle, Horace, and Longinus--manifest a debate on the proper place of the sacred in the aesthetic scene of representation. The debate begins with Aristotle's establishment, via critical fiat, of the aesthetic scene's formal and ethical self-sufficiency. Rather than following up the possibilities for artistic and anthropological discovery enabled by this bold gesture, however, Horace and Longinus display a curious reluctance to evacuate sacrality from aesthetic representation, as if they sensed that to do so was, at the very least, to run the risk of emptying the center of its attention-fixing capabilities.
For Aristotle's successors, in other words, the processes of aesthetic
Sacred Ambivalence: Mimetology in Aristotle, Horace, and Longinus
Matthew Schneider
Department of English
Chapman University
Orange CA 92666 schneide@nexus.chapman.edu Almost from its very beginnings mimetology has looked to ancient Greece for its proof texts. For both René Girard's hypotheses surrounding the ethical and ethnological implications of mimetic desire and Eric Gans's identification of the part played by mimetic resentment in cultural evolution, the texts of Homer and the tragedians have served (in the words of Walter Burkert) as "a mirror in which the basic orders of life, lying far behind us, become visible with an almost classical clarity" (xxiii).
For Burkert, this mirror's clarity is the product of ancient Greece's serendipitous "union of antiquity and sophistication" (xxiii). While mimetic theory has dwelt on the significances of Greek literary and religious traditions, the culture's sophistication--especially in matters critical and philosophical-- have received relatively scant notice. In light of the historical priority of the aesthetic over the theoretical, such inattention is understandable. This essay, however, will demonstrate how the writings of three of the classical age's most influential commentators on literary theory--Aristotle, Horace, and Longinus--manifest a debate on the proper place of the sacred in the aesthetic scene of representation. The debate begins with Aristotle's establishment, via critical fiat, of the aesthetic scene's formal and ethical self-sufficiency. Rather than following up the possibilities for artistic and anthropological discovery enabled by this bold gesture, however, Horace and Longinus display a curious reluctance to evacuate sacrality from aesthetic representation, as if they sensed that to do so was, at the very least, to run the risk of emptying the center of its attention-fixing capabilities.
For Aristotle's successors, in other words, the processes of aesthetic