Refiguring Mimesis: Representation in Early Modern Literature

This volume of essays looks at Renaissance texts through the lens of modern theories of mimesis, and also investigates traces of Early Modern equivalents within those same works. With the assimilation of critical theory into literary studies during the late 1960s and the 1970s, many scholars challenged the idea that mimesis was an unproblematic ‘representation of reality’. Instead, they found a much more complex mimetic art in operation on the early modern stage. While the work of these earlier scholars is seminal, this volume argues that it is time to re-figure the question of mimesis. Contributors examine a wide variety of Shakespearian and non-Shakespearian texts to come to an increased historical understanding of the way mimesis operated 400 years ago, but, more importantly, how they can be seen to be operating differently today.