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Modern Mimology: The Dream of a Poetic Language

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Gerard Genette  and
Thaïs E. Morgan
Gerard Genette
Affiliation:
Arizona State University, Tempe
Thaïs E. Morgan
Affiliation:
Arizona State University, Tempe
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Extract

In Mimologiques: Voyage en Cratylie ‘Mimologics: A Voyage into Cratylusland,’ Gérard Genette introduces his readers to a new genre of discourse that cuts across disciplinary boundaries: mimologism. Beginning with the “founding text” in Plato's Cratylus, Genette explores the twists and turns of the debate between mimeticists and conventionalists over the origin and nature of language. The terms mimologism and Cratylism describe the position of Cratylus and all those in his wake—aestheticians, poets, and philosophers of language—who believe, “rightly or wrongly,” that “there must be a relation of reflective analogy (a relation of imitation) between ‘word’ and ‘thing,‘ that motivates, or justifies, the existence and the choice of the former.” At the same time, the “Cratylian desire” for perfect harmony between word and thing expresses itself unconsciously in “reveries,” or mimologics, in which the dreamer—whether Schlegel, Renan, Proust, or Saussure—muses on the mimetic potential of language (Genette 9).

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 104 , Issue 2 , March 1989 , pp. 202 - 214
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1989

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