Imitation is the doctrine of artistic creativity according to which the creative process should be based on the close imitation of the masterpieces of the preceding

author An author is the writer of a book, article, play, mostly written work. A broader definition of the word "author" states: "''An author is "the person who originated or gave existence to anything" and whose authorship determines responsibility f ...

s. This concept was first formulated by Dionysius of Halicarnassus in the first century BCE as '' imitatio'', and has since dominated for almost two thousand years the Western

history of the arts The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both hi ...

and

classicism Classicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard for a classical period, classical antiquity in the Western tradition, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate. In its purest form, classicism is an aesthet ...

.Shroder (1972) p.282 quote: Plato has regarded imitation as a general principle of art, as he viewed art itself as an imitation of life. This theory was popular and well accepted during the classical period. During the Renaissance period, imitation was seen as a means of obtaining one's personal style; this was alluded to by the artists of that era like

Cennino Cennini Cennino d'Andrea Cennini (c. 1360 – before 1427) was an Italian painter influenced by Giotto. He was a student of Agnolo Gaddi in Florence. Gaddi trained under his father, called Taddeo Gaddi, who trained with Giotto. Cennini was born in ...

Petrarch Francesco Petrarca (; 20 July 1304 – 18/19 July 1374), commonly anglicized as Petrarch (), was a scholar and poet of early Renaissance Italy, and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters is often credited ...

and

Pier Paolo Vergerio Pier Paolo Vergerio ( 1498 – October 4, 1565), the Younger, was an Italian papal nuncio and later Protestant reformer. Life He was born at Capodistria (Koper), Istria, then part of the Venetian Republic and studied jurisprudence in Padua, wh ...

. In the 18th century,

Romanticism Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate ...

reversed it with the creation of the institution of

romantic originality Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate ...

. In the 20th century, the

modernist Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

and postmodern movements in turn discarded the romantic idea of creativity, and heightened the practice of imitation, copying, plagiarism, rewriting, appropriation and so on as the central artistic device.

Notes

References

*Shroder, Maurice Z. (1972) ''France / Roman - Romanesque - Romantique - Romantisme'' in Eichner, Hans (1972
''"Romantic" and Its Cognates: The European History of a Word''
Concepts in aesthetics Literary concepts Greek Muses Poetics Plot (narrative) Narratology Narrative techniques Rhetorical techniques Literary criticism Literary theory Figures of speech {{lit-stub