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.
Themes
The Relationship Between Literature and Society
One of Auerbach’s primary revelations about literary realism throughout Western history is that literature has always reflected something about (or been a reflection of) the society within which it was written. Realism might typically be thought to refer to any literature that objectively portrays the real world, but Auerbach explores how texts can be “realistic” even when they portray something other than objective reality. Instead, critics can understand realism as expressing something vital about the society of a particular work’s author. As Said explains, “[t]he ‘representation’ of reality is taken by Auerbach to mean an active dramatic presentation of how each author actually realizes, brings characters to life, and clarifies his or her own world” (xx).
The so-called objective realism that might be expected by most readers requires the author to imbue both a sense of historiography and an awareness of the reality of social strata beyond his or her own, but Auerbach’s study reveals that these two concepts took quite some time to develop. In ancient times, he explains, historiography (or research into and interest in social and intellectual developments in history) is unknown. Antiquity “does not see forces [social or otherwise], it sees vices and virtues, successes and mistakes. Its formulation of problems is not concerned with historical developments either intellectual or material, but with ethical judgments” (38). Similarly, works of antiquity, classical style, and others reveal a lack of consideration for any classes other than the upper echelons; any representation of lower-class denizens is either surface-level (used only to serve the purposes of the upper classes) or relegated to the low style associated with comedy.
Although such works only represented “a narrow portion of objective life circumscribed by distance in time, simplification of perspective, and class limitations,” the works Auerbach explores nonetheless reveal important elements of reality as conceived by the societies of each author (121). The courtly romances of pre-Renaissance France, for example, are all “graceful vignettes of established custom, one might say of a ritual which shows us courtly society in its setting of highly developed conventionality” (131). French “courtly” upper-class society at the time valued certain customs and venerated knights and the culture that developed around knightly stories. So although the courtly romances revealed only a surface-level and somewhat fantastic reality of life at the time, they did reveal the reality of class ethics and values. As society itself became more historically aware in the 16th century, so too did literature, and the same phenomenon happened with class differences and other previously ignored aspects of reality.
Auerbach consistently notes how particular literary styles and content represent symptoms of their era. Confronted with the ways German literature did not move toward more complex and historically and socially aware literature alongside other parts of Europe as the complexities of modern life crept in, Auerbach noted a common human temptation to “entrust oneself to a sect which solve[s] all problems with a single formula, whose power of suggestion imposed solidarity, and which ostracized everything which would not fit in and submit” (550); this temptation, he explains, was great enough to give fascism an easier path through countries where old European culture held sway. Some societies and literatures moved in an opposite direction. After World War I, Europe was “unsure of itself, overflowing with unsettled ideologies and ways of life, and pregnant with disaster,” and this is reflected, he argues, in certain writers’ use of “a method which dissolves reality into multiple and multivalent reflections of consciousness” (551). From ancient times to Auerbach’s modern world, he reveals how works of art can be understood by empathizing with their contemporary situations and vice versa.
The Evolution of Western Literary Realism
Through Auerbach’s analyses, Western literary history can be seen as a cohesive process of development, despite the existence of seeming contradictions between and within texts. Edward Said sums up this evolution in the Introduction to Mimesis:
The historical trajectory that is the spine of Mimesis is the passage from the separation of styles in classical antiquity, to their mingling in the New Testament, their first great climax in Dante’s Divine Comedy, and their ultimate apotheosis in the French realistic authors of the nineteenth century—Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert, and then Proust (xiv-xv).
The separation (or mingling) of styles as identified by Auerbach provides a clear connection between all the texts of Western literature, influenced by both the texts of antiquity and those of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Auerbach identifies authors who pioneered new ways of using the separation or mixture of styles, noting major changes in literary history such as Dante’s mastery of poetry in the vernacular (rather than classical Latin) and his opening up of “the panorama of the common and multiplex world of human reality” (220), Montaigne’s embarkation into the world of self-analysis, or Stendhal’s founding of what became the modern sense of realism, embedding a character within his time and location in the world.
The development of Western literary tradition was not a smooth, linear one in Auerbach’s analysis. He explains how Homer’s Odyssey and the Judeo-Christian Bible represent ancient traditions of two very different styles: Homer’s tradition represents early versions of the separation of styles, while the Bible illustrates how high and low styles were mixed as a result of the Judeo-Christian conception of God and his relationship to humans and earth. But Western literary tradition did not retain two completely separate traditions, nor did it consistently develop toward and maintain one or the other as a primary style. Instead, Auerbach illustrates how the mingling of styles began to make its way into secular works before a separation of styles reasserted itself and then was ultimately abandoned. He does not choose either the separation or the mingling of styles as a more favorable end goal for the evolution of literary tradition, but rather traces the tensions between both and how their use helps readers understand each era of Western history.
A limitation of Auerbach’s study is, according to Said’s Introduction, his lack of focus on English literary contributions to the development of Western literary tradition. Auerbach also claims that he did not use many examples from German literature because in his opinion they were not as representative of European literary tradition. This comes from a personal regret that German literature “expressed […] certain limitations of outlook in […] the nineteenth century” (571). Despite his reasoning, Auerbach’s focus on primarily French and Italian texts does raise the question of how much Auerbach’s theories can be applied to the rest of Western literature. From the standpoint of canonical literature, however, Auerbach’s study provides important insights into how the representation of reality developed, based on Western traditions of the separation and mingling of styles.
Objective Versus Subjective Realism
Since Auerbach’s conception of realism included works that reflected something about their time and place rather than a perfect imitation of reality, study of Auerbach’s critical work must include consideration of objective versus subjective realism. The Relationship Between Literature and Society explored the way that realism could still be “real” in the sense that it reveals something real about the society of the author. Similarly, realism can reveal the ways that humans perceive their world. In works that focus only on those of the upper classes, such as ancient or courtly texts, one can still call their style realistic in the sense that they reveal how the upper classes saw themselves or wished to be seen. Understanding a particular society’s realism, then, requires empathy and investigation into popular values and perspectives of any given time. Said describes this phenomenon as a blurring of “the line between actual events and the modification of one’s own reflective mind” (xiii).
Much of Auerbach’s exploration of subjective realism focuses on the relationship between society and art, but he reveals how such subjective approaches to representing reality came to their apotheosis in Modernist works after World War I. Modernists, in their attempts to “fathom a more genuine, a deeper, and indeed a more real reality,” plumbed the depths of inner life to represent that reality (540). Realism, then, became more personal and more intensely subjective. “The writer as narrator of objective facts has almost completely vanished,” Auerbach explains; “almost everything stated appears by way of reflection on the consciousness of the dramatis personae” (534). Readers come to know characters through the perceptions of others and through the character’s own inner thoughts. This may not represent the outer world objectively, but it does seek to represent the very real ways that humans experience their world. Even time alters in its literary representation; authors explore how time seems to expand or contract based on one’s experiences and thoughts. Auerbach describes the Modernist representation of time as revealing “a sharp contrast between the brief span of time occupied by the exterior event and the dreamlike wealth of a process of consciousness which traverses a whole subjective universe” (538). Reality gains depth in the works of Modernists, expanding to include experience and perception more obviously than their predecessors. The inclusion of inner experience in representations of reality provides an entirely new realm of reality hitherto ignored, despite the fact that works of literature represented realities that were, as Auerbach shows, already subjective.
