In Muckelbauer’s paper, he starts off exploring whether imitation is dead, alive, or just to what extent it is still in effect in Academia. He explores many philosophers’ takes on the matter from Plato, Aristotle, Quintilan, and Nietzsche.
The first form of imitation he examines is repetition-of-the-same. This is just copying something adding nothing or taking away nothing. Muckelbauer acknowledges that this method is conservative and fundamentally has to oppose the idea of invention. He quotes Quintilan early on to say that to even make whatever is being imitated better, one cannot do this or they would fail at their original goal of making a pure copy (Pg. 68). Muckelbauer goes through this history of imitation, designating that it shows up in antiquity. Overall, Muckelbauer explains the use of this imitation exercise in that it helps students who have copied enough of one person to start writing like that person.
The second imitation exercise Muckelbauer identifies is repetition-of-difference/variation. This idea is one that embraces the short fall of repetition-of-the-same to say to repeat, one must vary (Pg. 77). This means that one cannot copy the model, but differentiate their copy from the model.
The final exercise is “difference and repetition,” or just inspiration. This one was hard to understand, but from what I gather, this imitation is supposed to surpass the model in quality either through exact imitation (determinate content) or through the second exercise, through difference (differential reproduction).
Posted by David N. on December 7, 2008
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