For many serious readers, Robert Alter writes in his preface, the novel still matters, and I have tried here to suggest some reasons why that should be so. In his wide-ranging discussion, Alter examines the imitation of reality in fiction to find out why mimesis has become problematic yet continues to engage us deeply as readers.

Tragedy and Philosophy

A critical re-examination of the views of Plato, Aristotle, Hegel and Nietzsche on tragedy. Ancient Greek tragedy is revealed as surprisingly modern and experimental, while such concepts as mimesis, catharsis, hubris and the tragic collision are discussed from different perspectives.

Mimesis has long been cited as a key concept in the exploration of the relationship between art and reality. In this major study Arne Melberg discusses the theory and history of mimesis through analysis of texts by Plato, Cervantes, Rousseau and Kierkegaard, and brings mimesis as a concept into the context of the literary theories of de Man and others. This strenuously argued account of language and time charts the movement of mimesis from the Platonic philosophy of similarity to modern ideas of difference.

Uncertain Mirrors realigns magical realism within a changing critical landscape, from Aristotelian mimesis to Adorno’s concept of negative dialectics. In between, the volume traverses a vast theoretical arena, from postmodernism and postcolonialism to Lévinasian philosophy and eco-criticism. The volume opens and closes with dialectical instability, as it recasts the mutability of the term "mimesis" as both a "world-reflecting" and a "world-creating" mechanism.