Paul Ricoeur’s Threefold Mimesis and the Significance of Literature

Abstract

In this essay, I am trying to show how literary texts refer to the extra-textual world by focusing on Paul Ricoeur’s understanding of threefold of mimesis. Ricoeur’s theory is an expanded and radical interpretation of Aristotle’s understanding of mimesis Ricoeur claims that in order to fully grasp the concept of mimesis, we need to interpret it in conjunction with the concept of muthos. On the other hand, by translating “muthos” not as “plot”, which is understood as a static and closed system, but as “emplotment “, Ricoeur gives mimetic activity a dynamic meaning. In this way, Ricoeur re-establishes the referential function of fiction, transforms the role of the reader from a passive receiver into an active participant in the mimetic activity, and reinterprets mimesis as a productive referent, rather than a mere copy. Ricoeur’s approach takes a stand against the “closed system” approach that prevents structuralist and semiotic criticism from going beyond the text. Ricoeur argues that the literary text is connected to the life-world. It refers to the world of action in a mediated way and reshapes the way the reader comprehends and makes sense of this world. This reshaping takes place during the act of reading which is defined as a multilayered process that starts from the reader’s world, moves through the literary fiction and returns back to the world of the reader. In order to understand this process, Ricoeur puts forward that we need to resort to the tools of phenomenology and hermeneutics. The task of phenomenological hermeneutics is to reconstruct this series of processes that originate in and flow towards life. In conclusion, Ricoeur’s theory of mimesis reclaims the referential function of fiction from its exile by shifting from the Platonic understanding of mimesis to the Aristotelian understanding of the concept and offers an original account of the relationship between fiction and reality by revealing the unique transformative power of literature.