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The Real in the Unreal Mimesis and Postmodern American Fiction Bo Pettersson (Helsinki, Finland)

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The Real in the Unreal Mimesis and Postmodern American Fiction Bo Pettersson (Helsinki, Finland) The Real in the Unreal Mimesis and Postmodern American Fiction Bo Pettersson (Helsinki, Finland) Cognitive literary studies have so far primarily American fiction since the 1960s. But it also focused on literary functions, meta-theoretical helps to explain why American literary criticism discussions and reader-response tests (see, for so readily took to postmodern fiction in fact, example, Veivo et al. 2005). Such approaches so readily that Tony Hilfer (1992/1993: 7) has disregard many features of literary inter- rightly complained that American letters has pretation. By discussing the concept of mimesis continued to value the tradition of the romance- and how it has been understood by literary novel, lately in the guise of postmodern fiction, scholars, especially in relation to postmodern more highly than realist fiction. In a recent paper American fiction, I want to contribute to the on Richard Brautigans fiction I took my cue hermeneutic dimension of cognitive literary from Hilfer, among others, in arguing that critics studies. This entails establishing mimetic aspects of postmodern American fiction have tended to in literary works and, more particularly, focus on its metafictional aspects at the expense reassessing the realist dimension in postmodern of its referential ones (see Pettersson 2004). American fiction, that is, in some sense, I now aim to develop a related argument by detecting the real in the unreal. I should empha- considering both postmodern American fiction size that it is not my intention to suggest that per se and its criticism. With regard to the genre denominations are non-existent or former, I would claim that postmodern unhelpful, but that a facile use of them may incur American fiction has continued the romance- blindness to the complexity inherent in the novel tradition, with the important addition that genres and sub-genres employed in postmodern this tradition, like all fiction, always includes fiction (which is also often implicitly viewed as referential aspects (see Pettersson 1996). As a sub-genre of fiction). for the latter, I would suggest that the rather Postmodern American Fiction and the simplistic dichotomy between the (realist) novel American Grain and the romance-novel is due in part to the Despite the fact that so many of the great equating of mimesis with imitation. That is, American novelists and short-story writers are for much of the late twentieth century in realists of sorts, there is a half a century long American literary criticism and beyond, the tradition in American letters of valuing mythical implicit view seems to have been that fiction is and symbolic novels more highly than realist either realist (and thus for many theoretically- ones. This was in some ways corroborated by inclined critics, uninteresting, old-fashioned, the division that Richard Chase (1957) made even naive) or symbolic, fantastic and between the novel (meaning the realist novel) experimental (hence captivating, avant-garde, and the romance or romance-novel. I have even revolutionary). Few may have put the case argued elsewhere that the postmodern as starkly as Catherine Belsey (1980/1991) in American fiction is heir to the mythic, her condemnation of realist fiction and praise allegorical, and symbolistic forms with for interrogative postmodern fiction, but most symbolic or ideological, rather than realistic, likely she epitomized a general critical sentiment plausibility, which Chase (1957: 13) found at the time on both sides of the Atlantic. To be typical of the American romance-novel (see sure, much postmodern fiction was more Pettersson 1994: 13). The indigenous romance- experimental and at times even more interesting novel tradition epitomized by Hawthornes and than realist fiction from the 1960s to the 1980s. Melvilles novels suggests why postmodern Nonetheless, I will try to show that postmodern tendencies became so easily rooted in American fiction also includes realist features 33 The European English Messenger 16.1 (2007) and that a broader understanding of mimesis equating of mimesis with the imitation-of-nature must be part and parcel of its critical view that has been taken for granted in most reassessment. This in turn has repercussions literary scholarship of the last two centuries. on how mimetic aspects of realist fiction are Even Erich Auerbach (1946/1991: 554) in his viewed. magisterial, if non-theoretical, treatise Mimesis I should like first to tip my hat to Christine defines the subject of his book as the Brooke-Rose and John Barth, two authors and interpretation of reality through literary critics who, in their characteristically insightful representation or imitation. Of course, his manner, about a quarter of a century ago saw rich and diverse chapters on Western literature the real in the unreal from Thousand and One shows that imitation for him can encompass Nights and Don Quijote to postmodern fiction. many levels of literary representation. Yet his [U]ltimately all fiction is realistic, whether it mimes a view of how realism both medieval and mythic idea of heroic deeds or a progressive idea of modern, in the visual arts as well as literature society, inner psychology or, as now. [sic] the non- represent[s] the most everyday phenomena of interpretatibility [sic] of the world, which is our reality reality in a serious and significant context as its interpretatibility once was (and may return). A (Auerbach 1946/1991: 555) may well have fantastic realism. (Brooke-Rose 1981/1983: 388) contributed to the division between world- [N]ot only is all fiction fiction about fiction, but all reflecting and world-simulating views of fiction about fiction is in fact fiction about life. Some of us understood that all along. (Barth, The Friday mimesis in the eyes of critics dealing with Book [1984], quoted in Polvinen, forthcoming) postmodern fiction. In order to understand why most other critics Similarly, in one of the most influential studies are only now starting to distinguish such aspects in American letters of the mid-twentieth century, in postmodern fiction, we must turn to the The Mirror and the Lamp, M. H. Abrams checkered history of mimesis. (1953/1971: 8) defined the mimetic orientation Reconsidering Mimesis: Discovery and as imitation and as probably the most primitive Invention aesthetic theory at that. To be sure, he provides The notion of mimesis, Stephen Halliwell (2002: a brief history of the concept and further 343, 344 quote) shows in his important study specifications of this mirror view of literary The Aesthetics of Mimesis, started to fade representation (as against the preferred lamp among philosophers and theorists even in the view introduced by the Romantic poets and Middle Ages and philosophers) (Abrams 1953/1971: 814, 30 46). But by his stark division and his down- in the past two hundred years it has become progressively alien to modern not to say modernist grading of the mimetic orientation Abrams and postmodernist accounts of art. As regards both strengthened the world-reflecting view of the practice and theory of art [ ], we live, it is mimesis and paved the way for the rather strong sometimes alleged, in a postmimetic era. condemnation of it in late twentieth-century Halliwell, professor of Greek at the University literary scholarship. More recently, Matthew of St Andrews, argues that when the notion was Potolsky (2006: 161) has attempted to relativize introduced and discussed by the Greeks, the notion of mimesis, but finally concludes that especially Plato and Aristotle, it included a for Western culture at least, there has been no spectrum of meanings ranging from discovery way out of it. or imitation (world-reflecting) to invention Now that I have made the point that mimesis (world-simulating). He detects a standard and and by extension realism was rather readily still prevalent view that it was an unqualified considered imitative and thus not held in high rejection of the imitation of nature that regard by literary theoreticians and historians subsequently characterized romanticism a by the mid-twentieth century (a tendency later view that neglects the fact that mimesis has strengthened in rather untenable ways by always been in part a concept of expression Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida; see (Halliwell 2002: 358). It is precisely this facile Halliwell 2002: 374380), let me try to context- 34 ualize the literary-critical view with a literary- realist techniques at the same time as it calls historical one. We should remember that no them into question with postmodernist hard-and-fast distinctions between empirical techniques. Hence, this openness to diverse kinds of fiction (such as realism or naturalism) genres and literary techniques has been brought and fantastic ones (such as romance or science about and is now permeated by postmodern fiction) were in existence before the twentieth techniques and popular and to some extent century. We may now classify H. G. Wellss non-literary genres. scientific romances as science fiction, but at It is my contention that literary scholarship the time the genre as such did not exist and his by its thwarted view of mimesis and realism in works were published along with works that the late twentieth century was rather blind to we would now term realist or naturalist. What the realist dimension of postmodern fiction. Paul happened in twentieth-century fiction and this Ricoeurs (1977/2003, 1983/1984) attempts to has perhaps not been adequately accounted for reinstate a broader, Aristotelian view of mimesis as yet was (at least) a three-fold polarization and reference in The Rule of Metaphor and between traditional and experimental fiction (at later in Time and Narrative, Volume 1, even first modern, then postmodern), between serious though widely read and admired by the literary or elite (high-brow) and popular (low-brow) establishment in the 1970s and 1980s, had little fiction, and between realist and fantastic genres. impact on the practical criticism of postmodern Although there were some ties between some fiction.
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