work in progress
According to the dictionary, to imitate has at least two meanings: to behave like someone else or to make a copy of someone or something else[1]. One can imagine an actor playing a role and a photographer making a picture. One can imagine these people as a poet and a painter. More than two thousand years ago, a text stated that some poets and painters were imitators[2]. This text laid the foundations of the concept of art as imitation[3]. However, according to scholars, the context of the text is not entirely clear[4]. Notably, the meaning of poetry and imitation are argumentable[5].
Bibliography
- Plato. Republic. Translated by Allan Bloom. 2nd ed. New York: Basic Books, 1991.
- Sontag, Susan. Against Interpretation. Reprinted. New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1969.
Notes
- Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary, s.v. "imitate," accessed 4 May, 2023, https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/imitateback to the text
- Plato, Republic, 394c, 597e.back to the text
- Sontag, Against Interpretation, 13. back to the text
- The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, s.v. "Plato on Rhetoric and Poetry," by Charles Griswold, accessed May 4, 2023. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2020/entries/plato-rhetoric/ back to the text
- The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, s.v. "Plato on Rhetoric and Poetry," by Charles Griswold, accessed May 4, 2023. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2020/entries/plato-rhetoric/ back to the text