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In The Light in Troy, Thomas M. Greene takes as his subject "the literary uses of imitatio during the Renaissance, but emphasizes as well that these "uses" extended beyond the literary to many other areas of educational, aesthetic, artistic, and political expression. (1) We do not know why imitatio, known as mimesis to the Greeks, became so pervasive, nor do we know why it eventually faded in significance, but we do know that it remained in Ben Jonson's time a central concern for theorists and artists alike. (2) For example, the significance of imitatio may be seen most clearly in a play like Jonson's Epicoene, or the Silent Woman (first performed December 1609 or January 1610); from start to finish it is, after all, a play about imitation, and it is difficult to believe Jonson does not intend to offer a critique of imitatio via this problem play. On the one hand, he is in keeping with the dominant precept of his age. On the other hand, he intentionally and paradoxically uses that precept as avenue and obstacle to understanding. Jonson's critique of imitatio is given its vitality by means of his understanding of the Renaissance concept of secrecy. By combining imitatio and secrecy, Jonson at once acknowledges his debt to Aristotle and Sidney and yet, as artist and theorist, avoids relying too heavily upon them. (3)
Jonson, of course, recognizes and appreciates what Aristotle and Sidney meant by imitation, but the manner in which he practices that art exhibits his independence from both, and therefore his interest in originality. After all, in Discoveries he contends that one must remain vigilant regarding the dangers of imitation:
Nothing is more ridiculous than to make an author a dictator, as the Schools have done Aristotle. The damage is infinite knowledge receives by it; for to many things a man should owe but a temporary belief, and a suspension of his own judgement, not an absolute resignation of himself, or a perpetual captivity. Let Aristotle and others have their dues, but if we can make farther discoveries of truth and fitness than they, why are we envied? Let us beware, while we strive to add, we do not diminish, or deface; we may improve, but not augment. (4)
Jonson strikes a balance between a recognized poetics and one's own attempt at "discoveries" strikes a balance, that is, between what Greene calls the "opposition originality/imitation" (5) While Jonson acknowledges that one might learn from, add to, or improve upon Aristotle, he departs from Aristotle where he practices the art of imitation in Epicoene by presenting a patently false "speaking picture."
Though the Latin term imitatio was dominant during the Renaissance, Jonson prefers the Greek mimesis; further, Jonson is not as interested in relying upon Juan Luis Vives or Roger Ascham, two of the better- known theorists regarding imitation, as he is in relying upon Aristotle. In the Poetics, Aristotle defines mimesis as the imitation of three different types of human action, or praxis: the imitation of thinking (as in dialogue and soliloquy), the imitation of physical actions leading to a specific result, and the imitation of genre and form. The first two types constitute the formal causes of poetry. But Renaissance humanists also believed that because it imitates rhetorical models, the third type of imitation could be considered rhetorical imitatio, the final cause of poetry. In The Defense of Poesy, Sidney alludes to both the formal and the final causes of poetry: "Poesy therefore is an art of imitation, for so Aristotle termeth it in the word mimesis--that is to say, a representing, counterfeiting, or figuring forth--to speak metaphorically, a speaking picture--with this end, to teach and delight" (6) Like Sidney, Jonson believes that mimesis can be an aid to, or adjunct of, rhetoric, and therefore that the causes of poetry can be both formal and final. Although he differentiates between "poesy." "poem," and "poet" he seems to validate Aristotle's definition of mimesis as well as Sidney's reading of Aristotle. "Poetry and picture are arts of like nature," Jonson argues in Discoveries, "and both are busy about imitation" (561). In his list of the "requisites" of a poet, Jonson describes the third as rhetorical imitatio, or the imitation of forms used by other poets: "The third requisite in our poet or maker is imitation, to be able to convert the substance or riches of another poet to his own use" (585).
Traditionally, then, mimesis was understood as the (selective) representation of nature. With the historical subject as its central focus, the most expansive critical elaboration of mimesis is Erich Auerbach's Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. (7) One of the most significant distinctions of Auerbach's study, it should be noted, is that he subordinates the reader to the author and the text: the reader must learn, through imitation, the proper reading method in order to understand the representation of reality. However, Terence Cave rightly argues that during the Renaissance, the emphasis on author and text is especially evident in the tendency to imitate the Ciceronian style, and that this writing activity necessarily implies the importance of different reading methods, and therefore the reader's participation:
[R]eading, for the Ciceronian, is the repetition of a perfect or near-perfect discourse; the reader should, as it were, disappear or efface himself in favor of the paradigm text. By contrast, the anti-Ciceronian position, which one might as well call in this period the Erasmian position ... extends virtually ad infinitum the range of texts to be read and stresses, not universal nature, but the individual nature of the reader as the agent by which this assemblage of materials is gathered, selected, and given meaning. (8)
Though Cave addresses primarily the works of Erasmus, Montaigne, and Pascal as evidencing an anti-Ciceronian mimesis concerning writer and reader, the distinction between Ciceronian versus anti-Ciceronian models of writing became an especially prominent subject of debate in seventeenth-century England, particularly because the seventeenth century was marked by the literary emergence of modern notions of selfhood, and therefore modes of expression that do not depend so strictly on imitation. Students would have been formally trained to recognize and imitate the Ciceronian style, but they also would have learned the so-called "curt" or "loose" anti-Ciceronian style and, more importantly, they would have understood the significance of decorum when determining which style is best suited to self-presentation and to effective communication. Hence the Renaissance reader becomes crucial to the process Cave refers to as "displacement": "The displacement mimed by the text is so mimed in order that the reader will operate a further displacement beyond its margins." (9) Insofar as it applies to the reader, "displacement" requires active participation; meaning thereby depends upon the reader's interpretation and understanding. In Epicoene, "displacement" may be seen in Jonson's attempt to involve the audience in regard to the secret of Epicoene's sex as well as the meaning of the word epicene.
II
Ever since Dryden's paean to Epicoene in An Essay of Dramatic Poesy, many critics have held that the theater audience does not know the secret of Epicoene's sex until the end of the play, and that, in fact, part of the play's success depends upon the theater audience not knowing the secret. "For the contrivance of the plot," declares Dryden, "'tis extreme elaborate and yet withal easy; for the ... untying of it, 'tis so admirable that when it is done no one of the audience would think the poet could have miss'd it; and yet it was conceal'd so much before the last scene that any other way would sooner have enter'd into your thoughts." (10) Though scholarship has since generally followed Dryden's lead, there have been interesting qualifications. Charles A. Carpenter, for example, argues that the audience, if it is fooled, will be so only on the first viewing; subsequent viewings or readings, however, would not be dependent upon surprise and would therefore be even more effective as they fulfill expectations, what Carpenter calls "surprise in Epicoene as an expectation." (11) G. R. Hibbard contends that there is no doubt the audience is fooled, and that deception, as it pertains to both the onstage and the theater audiences, is a major theme in the play:
The idea of deception is present from the beginning of the first scene ... deception follows deception right up to the most concise denouement that even Jonsonian comedy has to offer--the gesture with which Dauphine "takes off Epicoenes perruke" just fifty lines before the last word of the play is spoken. It is a complete surprise to everyone...
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