Imitating Authors: Plato to Futurity

Description

Imitating Authors is a major study of the theory and practice of imitatio (the imitation of one author by another) from antiquity to the present day. It extends from early Greek texts right up to recent fictions about clones and artificial humans, and illuminates both the theory and practice of imitation. At its centre lie the imitating authors of the English Renaissance, including Ben Jonson and the most imitated imitator of them all, John Milton. Imitating Authors argues that imitation was not simply a matter of borrowing words, or of alluding to an earlier author. Imitators learnt practices from earlier writers. They imitated the structures and forms of earlier writing in ways that enabled them to create a new style which itself could be imitated. That made imitation an engine of literary change. Imitating Authors also shows how the metaphors used by theorists to explain this complex practice fed into works which were themselves imitations, and how those metaphors have come to influence present-day anxieties about imitation human beings and artificial forms of intelligence. It explores relationships between imitation and authorial style, its fraught connections with plagiarism, and how emerging ideas of genius and intellectual property changed how imitation was practised. In refreshing and jargon-free prose Burrow explains not just what imitation was in the past, but how it influences the present, and what it could be in the future. Imitating Authors includes detailed discussion of Plato, Roman rhetorical theory, Virgil, Lucretius, Petrarch, Cervantes, Ben Jonson, Milton, Pope, Wordsworth, Mary Shelley, and Kazuo Ishiguro. Cover IMITATING AUTHORS: Plato to Futurity Copyright Dedication Preface Contents Abbreviations and a Note on the Texts Introduction PART I: Antiquity 1: From om Mimes̄ is to Imitatio: Before and After Plato Early uses of ‘mimes̄ is’ Greek drama Plato After Plato 2: Building Bodies: Imitatio and the Roman Rhetorical Tradition The Ad Herennium Cicero Seneca and metaphors for Imitatio Quintilian Longinus 3: Dreamitation: Lucretius, Homer, Virgil Lucretius Virgil’s ghosts PART II: Early Modernity 4: Petrarchan Transformations Humanist rediscoveries? Imitatio and plagiarism ‘Africa’ and the lost imitand 5: Adaptive Imitation: Ciceronians, Courtiers, and Quixotes Erasmus’s Ciceronianus Castiglione: sprezzatura and the courtier’s mastery Epic adaptations and novel creations 6: Formal Imitation: The ‘Leaden-Headed Germans’ and Their English Heirs Pico and Bembo Melanchthon Sturm Ascham Ramus, Harvey, and English ‘stylism’ 7: Ben Jonson: Formal Imitation Justus Lipsius and Jonson on imitation Formal imitation Jonson’s Epigrams Jonsonian reincarnations The sons of Ben PART III: Milton and After 8: Milton: Modelling the Ancients The sin of imitation? Imitatio in the seventeenth century Modelling the ancients Paradise Regained: the Temple as template 9: Imitation in the Age of Literary Property: Pope to Wordsworth Literary property The path to Wordsworth 10: The Promethean Moment: Mary Shelley and Milton’s Monstrous Progeny Imitating humans Mary Shelley From monsters to clones Posthuman Postscript: Poems more Durable than Brass Bibliography Primary works Secondary works Index