rhetoric

Imitation of Models (Literary Mimēsis)

μίμησις

Learning to write and speak well by closely studying and imitating the great authors.

Here mimēsis means stylistic imitation — the practice of absorbing the strengths of model authors so thoroughly that one can rival them rather than merely copy them. It runs through Hellenistic and Roman rhetorical teaching and gets its fullest treatments in Dionysius of Halicarnassus' On Imitation and the reading-list in Book 10 of Quintilian's Institutio Oratoria (late 1st c. CE); imitation of great authors is also one of the chief paths to grandeur in 'On the Sublime' (Longinus). This is distinct from Plato's and Aristotle's mimēsis, which means the artistic representation of reality.

Where this idea shows up

10 Greek sources

Where to read it

Problemata322 BCE
Pseudo-Aristotle· Chalcis
De Inventione84 BCE
Cicero· Formiae
On Oratory55 BCE
Cicero· Formiae
De Optimo Genere Oratorum46 BCE
Cicero· Formiae
Brutus46 BCE
Cicero· Formiae
Orator46 BCE
Cicero· Formiae
Academica45 BCE
Cicero· Formiae
de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum43 BCE
Cicero· Formiae
On the Sublime50 CE
Pseudo-Longinus
Enneades270 CE
Plotinus· Rome