JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Duke University Press and Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Poetics Today. I. Mimetic SemanticsFrom its origins, i.e., the writings of Plato and Aristotle, Occidental aesthetic thinking has been dominated by the idea of mimesis: Fictions (fictional objects) are derived from reality, they are imitations/representations of actually existing entities. During its long reign, the idea has been interpreted in many different ways and, consequently, the term "mimesis" has accumulated several distinct meanings.' Undoubtedly, these ambiguities can be resolved only by a careful theoretical and semantic analysis of the concept.2 My paper is intended to contribute to this analysis by constructing or reconstructing the theory of mimesis which underlies the praxis of modern mimetic criticism. This approach will prove useful for my specific and restricted purpose: to offer a critique of the popular mimetic phraseology and to propose a promising alternative to mimetic theories of fictionality.Historians of all kinds have been involved in the search for actual 1. The most substantial reflections on "mimesis" can be found in commentaries on the foundational texts (cf. Else 1957: 12-39, 125-35; Dupont-Roc and Lallot 1980: 144-63; Zimbrich 1984). Ricoeur discovered in Aristotle's Poetics three meanings of "mimesis" (in the broad sense of "mimetic activity") (Ricoeur 1984: 45ff.; 54-87). Spariosu has traced the concept to its pre-Socratic origins and concludes that there is "a functional distinction between non-imitative or pre-Platonic and imitative or Platonic mimesis" (Spariosu 1984: i). In this paper, I will repeat the common sin of modern times and neglect the pre-Platonic meaning. 2. Such an analysis is not advanced but rather hampered by shifting the focus of reflection from "mimesis" to "realism," an evasive move taken by many critics. PoeticsToday 9:3 (1988). Copyright ? 1988 by The Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics. ccc 0333-5372/88/$2.50. 476 Poetics Today 9:3 counterparts of fictional persons, events, places. Let me quote reports about three recent discoveries: (a) The British historian Geoffrey Ashe (in association with Debrett's Peerage) published a book titled The Discovery of King Arthur (1985) in which he claims to have identified the "original Arthur" in a fifth-century High King of the Britons called Riothamus. (b) In Robin Hood: An Historical Enquiry (1985), the legal historian John G. Bellamy continues the centuries-long efforts to apprehend the notorious outlaw. He finds a nineteenth-century hypothesis attractive according to which the prototype of Robin Hood was a valet to Edward II named R...
Many academics keep busy by erecting artificial barriers between linguistics and literary theory; on the other band, from the time of antiquity, various intermediary disciplines (such äs rhetoric, poetics, stylistics) have achieved considerable success in bridging the gap between the two semiotic disciplines. At present, a new and vigorous "mediator" has made its appearance; it is called text theory (or discourse analysis). Text theory is especially suited for its mediating role, because it pursues a twofold aim: not unlike linguistics, it aims at formulating abstract rules of text structures (rules of text grammar and text typology); at the same time, it reveals idiosyncratic features of individual texts which is in line with one of the basic aims of literary analysis.Text theory would fail in its mediating role, if it were conceived äs a mere application or extension of current linguistic models. The autonomy of text theory can be justified only if specific text properties, i. e. properties distinguishing text structures from language structures, are posited äs its explicandum. It is now widely acknowledged that one of these properties is text coherence. Already Harris (1952: 3) pointed out that texts are not aggregates of "stray words or sentences", but rather coherent verbal structures. In his recent contributions to text theory, van Dijk (1972;1973) proposes a text grammar which accounts for text coherence on two levels: "The constraints upon the concatenation of sentences in a coherent sequence are of two different types. A first set determines the immediate, linear transition relations between the sentences.... We will call these constraints microstructural constraints or microconstraints. Our hypothesis about the form of a text grammar, however, is much stronger. We claim that the coherence of sequences is also determined by what may be called macro-comtraints. These have the whole sequence äs their scope" (van Dijk, 1973: 20). Van Dijk has also observed that micro-constraints are, at least in part, identical with the rules which govern the relationship between phrases or clauses in complex and compound sentences; in other words, these textual micro-constraints are identical with those studied by linguistics (syntax) 1 . The textual macro-constraints, however, have no counterpart in language structures and, therefore, their study belongs exclusively to text theory. We can say that the study of macro-constraints or macrostructures represents the core of text theory. Final justification and future development of this discipline depends on the success of our search for textual macrostructures.This search is well advanced in the theory of narrative texts. It has been recognized that some of the basic components of narrative texts -such äs the story ("redt", the acting characters, etc. -are to be conceived of äs textual macro-structures. In the last decade, major progress has been made especially in the study of the global organization of the story; various Systems of "narrative grammar" have been proposed to...
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