57 pages • 1 hour read
Erich AuerbachMimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1946A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Index of Terms
Creatural Realism
Creatural realism is a type of realism anchored in the sensual (or sensory) world. It is not related to sensuality in the modern sexual sense; instead, creatural realism means that texts describe events and things in a heightened and intensely sensory manner. This type of realism begins, as Auerbach traces it, in the literature of the Middle Ages. During this time, difficult and sometimes horrific lives on earth led people to see their earthly lives as something lesser—a grotesque existence they must suffer before ascending to heaven. Writers would describe earthly events in intensely sensory ways, leaning toward the grotesque and ugly, to represent this worldview. In later works, however, creatural realism reappears, but this time without the dim worldview of earthly life as grotesque. Creatural realism is instead used to represent the power of the body through the use of intensely sensual descriptions.
Figura/Figural Realism
Figural realism is a type of realism developed out of Christian traditions. Said describes figura/figural realism as something that defines history as “not only mov[ing] forward but also backward, in each oscillation between eras managing to accomplish a greater realism, a more substantial ‘thickness’ […] a higher degree of truth” (xxi). It comes from early interpretations and attempts to reconcile the New Testament of the Christian Bible with the Old Testament. Christian Fathers and scholars would recognize a present (or more recent) event as having been foretold by another event in the past (so, for instance, finding echoes of Christ in the Old Testament), thus creating connections between past and present and creating meaning from those connections. Figura, in other words, “is the intellectual and spiritual energy that does the actual connecting between past and present, history and Christian truth, which is so essential to interpretation” (xxii). Figural realism is an essential type of realism to recognize when studying Christian texts (or texts that developed out of the Christian tradition). It provides a type of historicity to texts by finding connections between events.
Historicity
In its most simple definition, historicity means that a work has historical authenticity. Auerbach, however, uses the term to describe a certain awareness of history and sociocultural causes and effects within a text itself. He explains that texts up through at least the era of courtly romances lacked a sense of historicity. By this he means that authors did not bother to explore things like social or political causes of events; instead, they simply represented them and focused on good versus evil or right versus wrong. The epitome of historicity as Auerbach sees it is reached in Stendhal’s work in 19th-century France. Stendhal’s novels, Auerbach argues, cannot be understood if one does not understand the author’s era, including historical, political, and social tensions and events.
Realism (General)
In its simplest sense, realism is the practice of representing the world accurately. In Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, however, Auerbach focuses on realism as the serious representation of life in literature. Many readers associate the term realism with the exceptionally detailed descriptions of 19th-century writers like Thomas Hardy, but Auerbach moves away from such a limited view. Instead, he tracks realism across Western literary history as the representation of life as perceived or experienced by those who lived in that time. With this definition, Auerbach explores a variety of styles throughout literary history and explores how each text he analyzes represents the “reality” of the particular milieu in which it was written.
Separation (or Mingling) of Styles
The separation or mingling of styles is the primary theme Auerbach traces throughout Western literary history. The “styles” Auerbach references are those of “high” and “low” style. Edward Said describes them in the Introduction:
In classical literature, Auerbach says, high style was used for nobles and gods who could be treated tragically; low style was principally for comic and mundane subjects, perhaps even for idyllic ones, but the idea of everyday human or worldly life as something to be represented through a style proper to it is not generally available before Christianity (xviii).
Prior to Christianity, these “styles” were not officially recognized and had not reached their apogee, but ancient texts outside of Christianity did generally avoid serious representation of the lower classes. In the height of classical literature, the separation of styles was considered the rule, separation “elevated” (high) subject matter from “low” subject matter. Auerbach traces the mingling of styles to Christian tradition. Christ himself represents a mingling of “styles,” so to speak, through the arrival of his holy self to a humble class of people on earth, but this mingling of styles existed even before Christ, when God would appear to humans through the humblest of situations. Early Christian Fathers were influenced by antiquity, as well, however, and this led to the classical separation of styles before, eventually, works like Dante began the slow process of re-mingling the styles and representing any class of people and any event seriously. By the time of the Modernists, Auerbach explains, “[t]he strata of societies and their different ways of life have become inextricably mingled” (552).
