Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature - Critical Reception

Critical Reception

Mimesis is almost universally respected for its penetrating insights on the particular works it addresses but is frequently criticized for what is sometimes regarded as its lack of a single overarching claim. For this reason, individual chapters of the book are often read independently. This is unfortunate since Auerbach is clearly trying to present the tensions and pull of these two "styles" (the rhetorical and the Biblical/realist) during various periods under discussion, ultimately resulting in the rise of "modern realism." Most critics praise his sprawling approach for its reveling in the complexities of each work and epoch without resorting to generalities and reductionism. However, a work of this complexity comes with problems of its own. Auerbach has the habit sometimes of using a minor work as a representation of an era, such as upholding the obscure Antoine de la Sale as representative of the inferiority of Medieval prose literature while ignoring monuments like the Prose Lancelot or Prose Tristan.

By far the most frequently reprinted chapter is chapter one, "Odysseus' Scar" in which Auerbach compares the scene in book 19 of Homer’s Odyssey, when Odysseus finally returns home from his two decades of warring and journeying, to Genesis 22:1, the story of The Binding of Isaac. Highlighting the rhetorically determined simplicity of characters in the Odyssey (what he calls the "external") against what he regards as the psychological depth of the figures in the Old Testament, Auerbach suggests that the Old Testament gives a more powerful and historical impression than the Odyssey, which he classifies as closer to "legend" in which all details are leisurely fleshed out and all actions occur in a simple present – indeed even flashbacks are narrated in the present tense.

Auerbach summarizes his comparison of the texts as follows:

The two styles, in their opposition, represent basic types: on the one hand fully externalized description, uniform illustration, uninterrupted connection, free expression, all events in the foreground, displaying unmistakable meanings, few elements of historical development and of psychological perspective; on the other hand, certain parts brought into high relief, others left obscure, abruptness, suggestive influence of the unexpressed, "background" quality, multiplicity of meanings and the need for interpretation, universal-historical claims, development of the concept of the historically becoming, and preoccupation with the problematic.

Auerbach concludes by arguing that the "full development" of these two styles, the rhetorical tradition with its constraints on representing reality and the Biblical or "realist" tradition with its engagement of everyday experience, exercised a "determining influence upon the representation of reality in European literature."

It is in the context of this comparison between the Biblical and the Homeric that Auerbach draws his famous conclusion that the Bible’s claim to truth is "tyrannical," since

What he produced then, was not primarily oriented towards "realism" (if he succeeded in being realistic, it was merely a means, not an end): it was oriented to truth.

However, by the time Auerbach treats the work of Flaubert we have come full circle. Like the Biblical writers whose faith in the so called "tyrannical" truth of God produces an authentic expression of reality, Flaubert's "faith in the truth of language" (ch. 18) likewise represents "an entire human experience."