57 pages • 1 hour read
Erich AuerbachMimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1946A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Historical Context: World War II
Erich Auerbach composed Mimesis during World War II (1939-1945). As a German Jew, Auerbach found himself pushed out of jobs in the years leading up to the war, and in the mid-1930s he took a job in Istanbul, Turkey, fleeing Jewish oppression and, as the world later discovered, the Holocaust. Auerbach spent the war years in Istanbul, where he had much more limited access to critical editions of his chosen European texts than he had had at Germany universities. As Edward Said describes in the Introduction, the text is “an exile’s book, written by a German cut off from his roots and his native environment” (xvii). (Some critics have argued that Istanbul was not the cultural backwater that Auerbach seemed to paint it as, with wide literary access, but the fact remains that Auerbach was a displaced person trying to navigate life as an exile.) Auerbach explains:
[T]he book was written during the war and at Istanbul, where the libraries are not well equipped for European studies. International communications were impeded; I had to dispense with almost all periodicals, with almost all the more recent investigations, and in some cases with reliable critical editions of my texts (557).
This is why the book reads as it does, with very few critical references other than those Auerbach could recall; instead, his method revolves around close reading and textual analysis and reference to Auerbach’s own knowledge of history and various cultures. Another way that the war impacted Auerbach’s work was through the social and cultural tensions that Auerbach observed. He briefly observes in the book that German literature was haunted by a dogged traditionalism, and it is clear that Auerbach made connections between that lingering traditionalism and the fascism that gained power in Germany. Seeing this turn in his country’s culture and observing Europe from afar during the war provided Auerbach with a way to step back and observe Western culture and to observe how literature developed into what it was in the 1930s and 1940s.
Critical Context: Mimesis’s Legacy in Literary Criticism
Mimesis is a foundational work of criticism in literary studies. Auerbach explores Western literary history through several themes and motifs that he recognized throughout that particular literary tradition. For many scholars, his work is both affirming (in its defiance of Nazi book-burning and anti-Modernism) and intimidating (in its extreme erudition and depth of textual and linguistic analysis). Any scholar studying realism, the relationship between literature and politics, and literary realism must read and engage with the text in some way. Considerations of “style” also often reference Auerbach and his elaboration of the separation and mingling of styles throughout . No critical literary work since Auerbach’s has attempted such simultaneous scope and depth; Said asserts in the Introduction that “[t]he category of ‘realistic works of serious style and character’ has never been treated or even conceived as such” (556). Mimesis is regularly on lists of assigned reading for students of literature, despite the fact that literary fields have become far more specialized since Auerbach’s era of Romance philology. A few of the most widely referenced chapters in literary criticism are “Odysseus’ Scar,” “Farinata and Cavalcante,” and “The Brown Stocking.”
Literary-Historical Context: Romance Philology
Romance philology is the academic and critical practice of studying literatures in Romance languages (or languages deriving from Latin). This field of study’s height of popularity was in the 19th and early 20th century, and it was Erich Auerbach’s chosen field of study. Although philology’s focus is literature, it is not limited to literature; in fact, philological study is underpinned with a strong value of broad social, historical, cultural, and political knowledge. It involves, essentially, immersion in a culture and era, which requires learning a culture’s language and studying its history, politics, religion, and more in order to understand the literatures one is studying. Edward Said explains that in this critical tradition, understanding a humanistic text requires diving into cultures more deeply in order to understand them from their original perspectives:
[O]ne must try to do so as if one is the author of that text, living the author’s reality, undergoing the kind of life experiences intrinsic to his or her life, and so forth, all by that combination of erudition and sympathy that is the hallmark of philological hermeneutics (xiii).
This empathetic critical approach is essential to Auerbach’s method in Mimesis. With limited access to critical editions of his texts, Auerbach was still able to provide passages from each text in its original language, translations, and skilled analysis through both close reading of the text and sociocultural and historical knowledge of the era in which each text was written. Without his philological training, Mimesis could not have had the breadth and depth that it did, particularly since literary studies have become more and more specialized since the height of philology’s popularity.
