"Despite these theoretical advances, in the Anglo-American critical tradition the assumption that mimesis stands for an epistemologically transparent 'reflection of reality' remains almost unconsciously ingrained in much critical discourse. In this respect, the shadow cast by Erich Auerbach's seminal study Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (first published half a century ago) is a long one. It is one of the aims of this volume to refigure this Auerbachian hegemony by re-focussing, as in fact Auerbach himself did, on the irreducibility of the mimetic as a philosophical idea." "A wide-ranging collection by an exciting group of scholars, this is a timely and impressive contribution to a topic that, since Plato, has continued to perplex and stimulate philosophers and literary scholars alike."--Jacket.