La idea de imitación en Alexander Gerard como fundamento para la interpretación literaria y la correcta configuración social
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Universidad de Salamanca
info
- Pedro M. Cátedra (dir.)
- Juan Miguel Valero (dir.)
Publisher: Instituto de Estudios Medievales y Renacentistas y de Humanidades Digitales, IEMYRhd ; Universidad de Salamanca
ISBN: 978-84-121557-0-9, 978-84-121557-6-1
Year of publication: 2020
Volume Title: Confluencias dieciochescas. Cartografías del saber en el siglo ilustrado
Volume: 6
Pages: 9-23
Type: Book chapter
Abstract
The theorization of the concept of imitation in Alexander Gerard’s Essay on Taste (1755) apparently provides no new ideas. The reason is that, to a large extent, his theories on mimesis coincides with those developed by Aristotle in his Poetics and by other theorists of taste of the eighteenth century. However, a careful examination of the text reveals interesting nuances. On the one hand, in conceiving imitation as a kind of cognitive articulator that shapes the potentially unlimited association power of the human mind, Gerard makes a description of the concept much more precise than the contemporary descriptions and also puts his ideas on mimesis in relation with modern neuroscientific theories. And on the other, Gerard’s theories, in which he gives advice on what to imitate and how, could be considered a kind of theoretical correlate of the political ideology of the industrial bourgeoisie. A social class that, in the mid-eighteenth century, was becoming the dominant social group in Great Britain.
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