Romanticism, Realism and the Lines of Mimesis

Since Plato’s Republic , mimesis — the artwork’s tacit claim to reflect or imitate real life — has faced a near-constant stream of assaults, being accused of naturalising a supposedly uncomplicated relationship between world and fiction. Lines of Mimesis offers a revisionary account of mimesis. Specifically, it proposes a rethinking of the representational attitudes of two literary schools usually understood to be at odds with one another — Romanticism and Realism — through close readings of wri