According to Muckelbauer, imitation has always played an important role in literature and thought systems even going so far as to say “...western thought itself might be an imitation” (Muckelbauer 3). To lay the groundwork for his beliefs on imitation, Muckelbauer first talks about the term “imitation” which is described as being too vague a term when you consider what imitation entails and how it has changed over time. While imitation exercises were predominate in learning for quite some time, it was replaced with romantic subjectivity. The way Muckelbauer explains it, however, imitation was not replaced. Instead, he shows (using examples from literary theorist Mihai Spariosu) that “...far from abandoning the theory and practice of imitation, he claims that romanticism merely refined it” (Muckelbauer 4). Using an example from Neitzche, Muckelbauer further shows that there is not that much difference between “imitation and invention” (Muckelbauer 5)
Going on to the function of imitation in previous times, Muckelbauer explains that it was used to help students to write with “...the stylistic excellence of earlier writers” (Muckelbauer 10). He then goes into the qualities that were looked for in a model to imitate and the origins of literary theory in comparison to imitation. In order to decide what to imitate, a lot of questions came into play including the imitators personal and academic interests and capabilities. If these things are not taken into consideration the “...student's abilities to evaluate correctly” (Muckelbauer 12) is injured.
He supports his point by taking us through the three different movements of imitation. Through the first movement, “imitation of the same” Muckelbauer shows that imitation helps students to unconsciously imitate the style of the model in their own writing thereby, in a sense, becoming the model. He then touches on the second movement; through the explanation of “imitation of difference” Muckelbauer shows that, unlike “imitation of the same”, it allows for variation. This is usually a result of imitating many and varied authors. And finally, he touches upon imitation as inspiration (Muckelbauer 25). He says that inspiration shows that imitation of the same and imitation of difference do not really have such closed boundaries against each other and instead blur when imitation comes into play.
One aspect that I thought was interesting, because I touched on it in my Paper 2 draft, is the question of where the “self” goes when imitation comes into play. Muckelbauer explains that, to some, imitation is an act of “...losing oneself in response to a model” (Muckelbauer 27).
In the end, Muckelbauer shows that the line between variation and imitation is blurred when it comes to inspiration. He also shows that imitation has been useful in times past to improve student's writing styles by imitating other authors. These models must be picked out carefully to prevent students from only imitating the surface and getting nothing out of the exercise.
Posted by victoria on December 8, 2008
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