Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature - Position and Evaluation of Rhetoric

Position and Evaluation of Rhetoric

To the consternation of his colleague, Ernst Curtius, Auerbach's work is marked by an openly anti-rhetorical position. Classical writers such as Homer, Tacitus and Petronius, as well as Medieval theologians (except St. Augustine) and writers of the seventeenth century like Racine are criticized for adherence to the rhetorical doctrine of "styles" with their corresponding subject matters: the low style's association with the comedic and the popular classes, and the elevated style's association with the tragic, the historic and the heroic. Auerbach sees the Bible as opposing this rhetorical doctrine in its serious and poignant portrayals of common folk and their encounter with the divine. As Auerbach notes in chapter two when discussing the New Testament:

But the spirit of rhetoric—a spirit which classified subjects in genera and invested every subject with a specific form of style as one garment becoming it in virtue of its nature --could not extend its dominion to them for the simple reason that their subject would not fit into any of the known genres. A scene like Peter's denial fits into no antique genre. It is too serious for comedy, too contemporary and everyday for tragedy, politically too insignificant for history—and the form which was given it is one of such immediacy that its like does not exist in the literature of antiquity.

The Bible will ultimately be responsible for the "mixed style" of Christian rhetoric, a style that is described by Auerbach in chapter seven as the "antithetical fusion" or "merging" of the high and low style. The model is Christ's Incarnation as both sublimitas and humilitas. This mixture ultimately leads to a "popular realism" seen in the religious plays and sermons of the 12th Century. Auerbach also discusses the development of an intermediate or middle style due to Medieval influences from the Bible and Courtly Love (see chapters nine and fifteen on Boccaccio and Molière). This development of an intermediate and then ultimately another "mixed style" (Shakespeare, Hugo) leads to what Auerbach calls the "modern realism" of the nineteenth-century (see chapter nineteen on Flaubert).

Auerbach champions writers during periods under the sway of rhetorical forms of writing like Gregory of Tours and St. Francis of Assisi, whose Latin was poor and whose rhetorical education was minimal, but who were still able to convey vivid expression and feeling. He also champions the diarist Saint-Simon who wrote about the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century French court. Completely free of the absolute constraints of style found in a Racine or the superficial use of reality as found in a Prévost or a Voltaire, Auerbach finds in his surprising portraits of court life the precursor of Proust (an admirer) and Zola.