Mimesis as Metamorphosis in Classical Greek Literature

The aim of my dissertation is to trace an intellectual and theoretical trend in classical Greek literature and philosophy that ironizes and theorizes dramatic mimesis as transformative. The texts I will examine in my dissertation are loci classici for thinking about ancient literary criticism (e.g. Aristophanes’ Frogs) as well as mimesis (Plato’s Republic), and the originality of my project lies in bringing these texts together in order to think through a cluster of related concepts: mimesis, the body, and being and becoming. I will show show that the literary texts of Aristophanes and Euripides, in particular, shed light on dramatists’ views of mimesis, and I argue that they offer an alternative to the view of mimesis in Republic Book 10 as an image impoverished of being and knowledge. In Aristophanes and Euripides putting on a costume can change one’s bodily comportment and ultimately one’s character and behavior. By sketching a history of mimesis that precedes the work of Plato and Aristotle, my project brings out an alternative view of mimesis. I read the language surrounding mimesis in Aristophanes, Euripides, and Plato closely in order to show how mimesis is put into conversation with important thematic binaries such as being/becoming and seeming/being. Mimesis is often depicted not merely as a disguise or copy, but as a transformational force that affecting poets, actors, and audiences. By unpacking the depth and diversity of the discourses surrounding mimesis, we can see that it is connected to other topics in the intellectual revolution of the 5th c. BCE, such as nomos and physis and the development and profusion of rhetoric. In the dissertation I use the term “mimetic metamorphosis” to convey this notion of mimesis as metamorphosis. “Mimetic metamorphosis” is a helpful term because it covers both the scenes that depict poets or characters becoming or representing different people (such as Dicaeopolis becoming Telephus in Aristophanes’ Acharnians) and the t