on the audience or viewer) there may be overriding reasons to get some
details wrong. A painter, for example, might deliberately alter the pro-
portions or perspective of her subject in order to produce a certain effect
(examples of this are easy enough tofind in the work of modern painters).
This is rather different from thefirst case, in which the playwright tells a
story that isn’t true. For Aristotle might allow the playwright to write
about a mythical orfictional event, without allowing him to alter such
basic things as anatomical details of animals. If such alterations can be
part of successful artistic imitation, then Aristotle has obviously moved
far beyond Plato, for whom the artist was merely trying to copy as closely
as possible the appearance of things. Clearly, Aristotle doesn’t make the
same demand on imitation that Plato had made.
I am suggesting that Aristotle’s claims about imitation are connected
with his claim about poetry and universals in two ways:first, the claim
that poetry expresses universals provides an answer (of sorts) to Plato’s
criticisms of imitation; second, the differing way that imitation is licensed
in Aristotle, as opposed to Plato, is a result of his commitment to the
expression of universals in drama. Nonetheless, Aristotle’s claim that
dramatic poetry expresses universals may be separated from his analysis of
theatrical imitation. Criticisms of his claim about universals are explored
in Chapter 2, in the context of a discussion about truth on the stage. But
one can criticise (as I shall) his account of theatrical universals, whilst
maintaining that his view of imitation is superior to Plato’s. As Aristotle
correctly saw, playwrights do not merely seek slavishly to reproduce the
appearance of everyday events: in producing imitations of actions, they
omit parts of the story, they invent a great deal, and, on occasion, they
imitate falsely because it improves the artistic value of their work.
Mimesisand imagination
As we’ve seen, the imitation element ofmimesisis given extensive treat-
ment in Plato’s and Aristotle’s accounts of theatre. We saw how, for
Plato, the imitation of the everyday on stage takes us further from the
true world of forms; and how, for Aristotle, the notion of imitation is
much broader and encompasses artistically necessary inaccuracies as well
as omitting irrelevant subject matter. But, as we saw at the start of our
analysis of Plato, there’s another sense ofmimesisthat is clearly involved
in a typical performance: namely, a kind of imagining, play-acting or
pretending. This kind ofmimesisis also discussed in Plato and Aristotle,
in relation to theatre. It contains, I would suggest, a cluster of rather
different notions, which it is helpful to distinguish. Having done so, we can
go on to say something about the relationship between the two different
types ofmimesis.
Mimesis 35