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Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature
 
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Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature [Special Edition] (Paperback)

by Erich Auerbach (Author), Willard R. Trask (Translator)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
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Product details

  • Paperback: 616 pages
  • Publisher: Princeton University Press; 50th Anniversary edition edition (7 April 2003)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 069111336X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0691113364
  • Product Dimensions: 22.6 x 15.5 x 3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 164,806 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Product Description

Review

The compass and the richness of the book can hardly be exaggerated. This is true too of the originality of Mr. Auerbach's critical method which is at once encyclopedic and microscopic, combining the disciplines of philology, literary criticism, and history.
(The New York Times )

One of the most important and readable books in literary criticism of the past 15 years . . . The author, beginning with Homer and the Bible, traces the imitation of life in literature through the ages . . .touching upon every major literary figure in western culture on the way.
(Publishers Weekly )

One of the great works of literary scholarship. . . . Auerbach's method . . . is to fasten with fastidious sensitivity on some stray phrase or passage in order to unpack from it a wealth of historical insight. It is his combination of scholarly erudition and critical astuteness which is most remarkable.
(Terry Eagleton London Review of Books )

Written with the authority that comes from deep learning and full of information worth knowing. Princeton's 50th anniversary edition of Mimesis has an introduction by the late literary and cultural critic Edward Said that by itself is worth the price of the book. It's the only preface I know of that I wish were longer, serving as both an analysis of Auerbach and a ramework placing him in his scholarly and historical context. . . . Princeton's reissue of Mimesis is both timely and symbolic.
(Guy Davenport Los Angeles Times Book Review )

[Mimesis] offers not just an eminent reading of the Western canon, but a mighty lesson on how to write. . . . I don't think a more significant or useful book of criticism has been written in the half-century since Mimesis was published. What's more, I can't imagine that anything like it will ever be written again. . . . [In] producing such a rich, strong book on how to read, Auerbach composed a virtual manual on how to write, one I've referred back to again and again since the day, almost two decades ago, when I first happened upon it.
(Jim Lewis Slate Magazine )


Review

To describe Mimesis as a classic is to offer something of a dismissive understatement, which conveys nothing of the excitement of this book, as fresh and direct, as untechnical, as when it first appeared. To say that it constitutes virtually a history of Western literature is to omit adding that it writes that history in a way that is still new and stimulating, with nothing of the manual about it, a synchronic kind of history with which we are only just now catching up. It is also important to stress the novel relationship Auerbach establishes between sentence or syntax and narrative form; and the world-wide democratic perspective in which he framed his work which has only become visible since globalization. Mimesis is certainly one of the half dozen most important literary-critical works of the twentieth century.
(Fredric R. Jameson )

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13 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars The effect of reality in literature on the world aorund us., 14 Feb 2001
By A Customer
In Mimesis, Auerbach offers his views on the representation of reality in literature, and the importance of learning about the world around us from literature. He uses many different literary sources in his book drawing on references from many works of western literature from Homer and The Old Testament by way of Dante and many other writers, to Virginia Woolf and Emile Zola. The aspects of the book are the ways in which Auerbach considers not just situations and experiences but also individual characters and places and the reality of their representation. He also comments on the way in which authors should have an understanding of their characters and hence an input into the reality of these characters. Auerbach's success with his arguments is the way in which he knows exactly when to change his points and thus keep the reader's attention, and how he makes clear concise points to reinforce his deductions from well explained and provided examples. (Not the easiest thing to do in literary theory studies!) He carefully balances one author's style against another's and hence provides each sides positive points. Essentially he deals with the aspect of reality vs. the sublime and comes to some interesting and intelligent conclusions.
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