Various Aspects of Mimesis in Selected Sea Novels of Frederick Marryat, James F. Cooper and Richard H. Dana

Frederick Marryat’s The Phantom Ship (1839), James F. Cooper’s The Red Rover (1828) and Richard H. Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast (1840) may be regarded as simulacra of reality imitating the then extremely popular literary conventions of the Gothic sea novel, the nautical romance and the sea diary, respectively. However, informed by René Girard’s model of mimetic desire, Luigi Pirandello’s theory of mimetic form and Meyer H. Abrams’ metaphor of «mimetic mirror», the analysis proves that the ex