Mimesis in Classical Arabic Literature
Mimesis is one of the oldest and most fundamental concepts that has shaped Western aesthetics. The relationship between a work of art and reality lies at the core of Western attempts to make sense of representational forms of expression going back to the Ancient Greeks. Significantly, the concept entered the sphere of Arabic thought in the 9th-10th centuries when Aristotle’s Poetics was translated into Arabic. However, the Arabic understanding of Aristotle’s key ideas in the Poetics, including mimesis, remains obscure. Mimesis in Classical Arabic Literature promises to be the first comprehensive study of literary representation in medieval Arabic literature. It seeks to reconstruct premodern Arabic conceptions of the relationship between a literary work and reality, on the one hand, and the psychology and ethics of how one experiences and is affected by such representations, on the other. The central argument of the book contends that mimesis in the Arabic context was understood as “comparison” instead of the standard Western understanding of it as “imitation.” As a result, the aesthetic goal of literary expression in classical Arabic literature was not verisimilitude but similarity. This requires a different strategy of reading and literary appreciation, exposing an alternative understanding of literature and the literary arts.