The Paradox of Mimesis

The Paradox of Mimesis in Sidney's "Defence of Poesie" and Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus"
Author(s): Noam Reisner

Source: The Cambridge Quarterly, Vol. 39, No. 4 (December 2010), pp. 331-349
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43492434
Accessed: 27-04-2019 11:54 UTC
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access
to The Cambridge Quarterly
This content downloaded from 77.111.247.227 on Sat, 27 Apr 2019 11:54:30 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
The Paradox of Mimesis in Sidney's
Defence of Poesie and Marlowe's
Doctor Faustus
Moam Reisner
Western PHILOSOPHY has always framed the question of mimetic art,

and by extension of aesthetics, in relation to epistemology. Whether it is
Plato who worries in Book X of the Republic about the remoteness of the
mimetic copy from the ideal Forms, or Kant in The Critique of Judgement
who puts the thing-in-itself outside the realms of empirical cognition and
therefore beyond representation, the ontological premise of a 'reality',
elusive and inexpressible though it may be, has always dominated the
debate about the truth-value of art. In Western Renaissance Europe, not-
withstanding the slow recovery of Aristotle's Poetics through several influen-
tial Italian commentaries, Plato's pejorative definition of mimesis in the
Republic dominated. For Plato and his Christian heirs, the singular Idea or
idealised object is profaned through mimetic representation simply
because it ceases to be singular; it devolves from a universal absolute to
an imperfect, reproducible impression. The marked artistic obsession in
the Renaissance with meta-art and verisimilitude is in turn symptomatic
of a larger intellectual struggle to reconcile the Platonic-Christian desire
to assimilate oneself into the oneness of God with the desire - itself
potentially hubristic - to celebrate the created world through a reverse

process of populating nature with artificial copies which nevertheless
delight the observer by supposedly outdoing nature. The idea of artistic
mimesis was thus always rooted in the artist's often troubled relationship
with an absolute, though merely shadowed, reality of the idealised spiri-
tual realm.
doi: 1 0. 1 093/camqdy/bfq028
© The Author, 2010.Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of
1 ne Cambridge Quarterly. All rights reserved. For permissions please email:
journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
332 THE CAMBRIDGE QUARTERLY
The most intriguing theoretical exploration of

poetry in the English Renaissance landscape
Defence of Poesy, ; and its most visceral artisti
relation to both poetry and theatre that of M
Sidney's rhetorical oscillations in his Defence cre
fusion and even inconsistency which has led som
the success of its argument, but persuasion, not
Writing in a humanist tradition of affective per
his implied reader's sense of history and moral i
Nevertheless, the conflict in Sidney's Defence b
rhetorical display is itself instructive. It she
problem which extends beyond the Defence to t
art and especially drama in the period (though S
address drama coherently in his exposition). A c
of Marlowe's The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus
theory, reveals just how startling some of the im
could be when pursued to their ultimate log
Sidney's text reveals the many pressures which
mimesis had to contend with in the early m
tragic farce fully exploits these pressures for their
spectacular dramatic possibilities.
When Sidney felt he had to defend poetry as
aware that those whom he had to persuade of p
God on their side and, as it happened in Sid
Calvinist God at that. In defending the edifying
the Protestant Sidney had to react against a rel
demned all vain literary and artistic production
It is not simply that Calvin taught his followers
ture whose will is fatally polluted by Original Si
1 There seems to be an overall critical consensu

rhetorically seductive but not persuasive, or at least th
and difficult to follow argumentatively, especially if
respond cogently to Stephen Gosson's The Schoole of
Sidney. See for example Catherine Barnes, 'The Hid
Speaking Voice of Sidney's Defence of Poetry' PM
A. C. Hamilton, Sir Philip Sidney: A Study of his Life
p. 110; John Hunt, 'Allusive Coherence in Sidney's A
(1987) pp. 1-16; Edward Berry, The Poet as Warrior i
SEL 29 (1989) pp. 21-34. However, for a differ
C. Ulrcich Jr., 4 "The Poets Only Deliver": Sidney's Co
in the Literary Imagination , 15/1 (1982) pp. 67-84, and
of Desire: Renaissance Defenses of Poetry (New Haven 198
THE PARADOX OF MIMESIS 333
nature is equally tainted by the F

verisimilitudes of this fallen, sinf
Man may very well be, as th
Montaigne believed, at the centre
for Calvin that man was therefore
sinfulness. Sidney, however, turn
yes, the world is indeed 'brazen
Unlike a metaphysician who 'do
nature',
Only the poet, disdaining to be tied to any such subjection, lifted up

with the vigour of his own invention, doth grow in effect another
nature, in making things either better than nature bringeth forth, or,
quite anew, forms such as never were in nature, as the Heroes,
Demigods, Cyclops, Chimeras, Furies, and such like: so as he goeth
hand in hand with nature, not enclosed within the narrow warrant of
her gifts, but freely ranging only within the zodiac of his own wit.
Nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapestry as divers poets
have done; neither so pleasant rivers, fruitful trees, sweet-smelling
flowers, nor whatsoever else may make the too much loved earth
more lovely. Her world is brazen, the poets only deliver a golden.3
Sidney's theory of the inspired poet's ability to create 'another nature' is a

calculated affront to Calvinism. Moreover, the affront is not just to Calvin,
but chiefly to Plato, and it proceeds by exploiting an ambiguity in the
very idea of 'nature' which goes to the heart of humanist ethics and of
Reformation theology as well
'Nature' is both a scientifically descriptive term and a morally prescrip-
tive one. In its descriptive sense, 'nature' alludes to the ordered state of
the world as it is, based on the consensus of human observation and tra-
dition. In such a scheme, any perceived prodigy, monstrosity, or anomaly
which appears to go against the received 'law of nature' is deemed
2 This idea flows from Calvin's related theory of revelation in nature: God
reveals himself in creation which is now tainted by the Fall, so that all men have a
natural knowledge of God. This knowledge, however, because tainted by sin, is
imperfect and cannot promote salvation, and can only serve to make man
inexcusable if he refuses to worship God. Only through the Word of God may the
elect be confirmed in grace. For a discussion of Calvin's theory of nature and
revelation see Charles Partee, Calvin and Classical Philosophy (1977; Louisville, Ky.
2005) pp. 42-50.
' The Defence of Fbesy, in Sir Philip Sidney, ed. Katherine Duncan Jones (Oxford
1 989) p. 2 1 6; subsequent references arc to this edition.
super-natural. However, in its morally prescript

the state of moral human behaviour as it ough
act, say of incest or cannibalism, is deemed unn
law of nature. The distinction between the two
a fine one, but it was sufficiently unstable in W
to have allowed completely opposed interpre
natural in human existence. So, for example,
idea of 'natural law' (variously interpreted) reli
the apparent immorality of experimental scienc
Hobbes did, the basis of morality altogether. Sid
guity by arguing that the mimetic imagination
the natural constraints of what is by creating 'f
nature', but with the explicit aim of upholding
how the moral law of nature ought to be. Indeed
nature' is one where the tension between the t
word dissolves, as the poet moves from the pr
the ideal. It is not merely a matter of copyi
improving on it so that others, delighting in su
might seek to better themselves in the process o
To bolster his idealistic reinterpretation of mi
appeals to Aristotle's equally anti-Platonic reasse
Poesy therefore is an art of imitation, for so A

word mimesis - that is to say, a representing,
ing forth - to speak metaphorically, a speaki
end, to teach and delight, (p. 217)
While one would indeed expect Sidney to invok

his argument, it is all too often missed just how
to the Poetics actually is. Bearing in mind that
read the Poetics first hand, but only a summary
possible Italian sources, we have to be cautious
poetic mimesis can both teach and delight is no
Unlike Plato, Aristode openly asserts in the Poet
naturally prone to engage and delight in mime
poetry, or music - and that this natural pro
whole activity worthy of analysis, but he never
4 While Sidney read Aristotle at Oxford, perhaps ev

would not have had access there to the Pbetics. It is
derivative excerpts from the Poetics in Italian comm
The Poetics of Aristotle in England (New Haven 1930) p
that poetry is a fit and necessary

'todraw with [its] charming sweet
most barbarous nations ťto an
Moreover, Sidney is writing in th
and probably Castelvetro as well,
Horace's Ars Poetka with Aristotelian classifications and Platonic idealism.
In this typically Renaissance scheme, Aristode's famous remark that
mimesis deals with one of three things - 'reality past or present; things as
they are said or seem to be; or things as they ought to be' (60b 8-11) - is
read through Horace to arrive, ironically, at a Platonic ideal. Where for
Aristotle 'ought to be' refers narrowly to causal probability (what in
reality, or 'nature', ought to happen given the right sequence of events, in
mimetic art often does happen), for Sidney and the Italian commentators
at the back of his mind 'ought' is understood ethically: the world is bad
and corrupt, but mimetic art can produce ideal exempla which can help
improve it. Sidney thus elevates the art of poetry to the height of biblical
prophecy: like the Roman vaies of old, or David in his psalms, the inspired
poet can see, as it were, into the mind of God, into the immutable and
fixed realm of Platonic Forms, and create such imaginary characters of
virtue that can no longer exist in the natural mutable world. When
handled under such conditions, mimetic art does not produce ephemeral
copies of a corrupt reality, but substantial truths of the highest divine and
moral order.
Ingeniously, therefore, having attacked the Platonic suspicion of poetry,

Sidney in effect uses Plato against Plato by invoking the theory of the
idealised Form to defend the truth value of mimetic art in general. The
'understanding', he argues, 'knoweth the skill of each artificer standeth in
that idea or fore-conceit of the work, and not in the work itself' (p. 216).
However, Sidney cannot make such radical claims without being deeply
embarrassed about them from a religious point of view. His anxiety in the
next paragraph is palpable:
Neither let it be deemed too saucy a comparison to balance the

highest point of man's wit with the efficacy of nature; but rather give
right honour to the heavenly Maker of that maker, who having made
man to His own likeness, set him beyond and over all the works of
that second nature: which is nothing he showeth so much as in
poetry, then with the force of a divine breath he bringeth things forth
surpassing her doings - with no small arguments to the incredulous
of that first accursed fall of Adam, since our erected wit maketh us
know what perfection is, and yet our infected will keepeth us from
reaching unto it. (p. 217)
An argument which started hand in hand with

willing himself into a state of divine perfection,
depths of Calvinistic despair. Sidney placates th
by reaffirming the grim realities of Original Sin
vatic poet from the status of active co-creator
mouthpiece of a divine breath merely flowin
shrewdly and playfully exploits in these lines t
righteousness of inspired readers and hopes that
is in fact still speaking here not about readers, b
Whether or not Sidney conceived of his defen
seductive bit of Castiglionian sprezzatura , the hu
playfulness, or playful seriousness as the case ma
through in the daring intellectual risks Sidn
implied argument with the Platonic-Calvinist co
example, the paradox of a passive inspired write
be leaning towards at this stage of his argum
Reformed thought; it lies at the heart of Luthe
authorship of the Bible and would re-emerge mo
doxical equivocations of Milton's invocation o
Paradise Lost. In Sidney's Defence , however, the
half-hearted, not to say ironic, rhetorical po
would certainly not be impressed with the way
Original Sin but then effectively releases man's 'e
of sinfulness. Had we but the will to do good w
runs Sidney's implied argument, perhaps
altogether since our 'erected wit' can still grasp
integrity. By submitting himself to the will of G
poet, Sidney's merely inspired human poet effec
tive powers. Such inspired poets, argues Sidn
delight, and to imitate borrow nothing of what
but range, only reined with learned discretion,
ation of what may be and should be' (p. 218).
Socrates' eponymous interlocutor explains that
(the demiurge) conceived of time as a mimetic re
The state of becoming, of perpetual mutability
distinct from, but contained in a mimetic relat
being which is static, infinite, and eternal. 'Was
the movement of becoming, but 'is' alone belong
'Was' and 'Shall be' are generated forms of Tim

them wrongly, without noticing, to Eternal B
'is' or 'was' or 'will be,' whereas, in truth of s
TIIK PARADOX OK MIMESIS 337
appropriate term; 4 was' and 'wil

properly applicable to the Becom
both of these are motions.0
In Sidney's corresponding schem

imagination to realise perfected
However, unlike Plato in the Titnae
be' and 'should be'. For Lutheran
whose very name, Yahweh, was
being in that 'which is, hath been
is far removed from created man'
God only reveals himself in time,
created world, or as English Prote
stood it, through the acting out o
causality is precisely that which Si
outside time to the divine mind its
be (that would, of course, be impo
causality), but the potential 'is'
Sidney, it appears, there can be no
gined time.
Sidney's theory of mimesis is remarkably original and theologically
bold, therefore, since it places its ethical emphasis not on the truth-value
of the mimetic object itself, but on the otherwise unrealistic but quite ima-
ginable truth-value of abstract moral ideas which art can convey, appar-
ently absolutely. What might have begun as an attempt to poke harmless
fun at Stephen Gosson's anti-poetic righteousness seems to have taken on
a life of its own once Sidney realised his real adversary was not Gosson,
but Plato. For a brief and entirely serious few paragraphs in his Defence ,
Sidney astounds with the proposition that it is only through mimetic art
that the truth of such abstract virtues as courage, wisdom, love, or piety
(and their sinful antonyms) can be made in any sense real in the mutable
world of sin. However, such a compelling anti-Platonic move finally
undermines Sidney's overall theory of poetry since it calls into question
the very conclusions he elsewhere seeks to draw from this argument. After
all, as Milton was also to discover, Sidney can only ever address fallen
readers. The morally edifying mimetic creation Sidney envisions can only
function by projecting into the mind's eye of suitably moral spectators and
readers an ideal state which must depend on said readers to translate such
ideas into action in the fallen world. However, as Sidney concedes, since
5 Trans. R. G. Bury, Locb Classical Library.
fallen man's will is 'infected' by sin such ac

through art must depend on the greater grace
ourselves back where we started: mimetic poetr
movement in Sidney's argument from Plato to A
can only create a large gap which allows Calv
numinous presence in a savage way. Sidney g
mimetic probability air to breathe and plays wit
notions such probability opens up, but then inst
presumptuousness by reducing such probability
all, we must always confront the possibility that
to allow his 'erected' wit to range freely is it
expression of an infected will. Realising that pe
much, Sidney then makes another sharp tu
hastens to add, 'But these arguments will by fe
fewer granted' (p. 217). Quickly moving on, he
the subject and goes on to categorise in the spirit
types of edifying mimetic creations a poet mig
mystical, philosophical, and moral. However, wh
the shaky new ground Sidney is now treading is
save mimetic poetry from Calvinist-Platonic op
move to save it from the mutable causality of re
dental reality which the earthly sign attaches i
Sidney grants, can only be experienced, like God
the mind, only cleared by faith' (p. 215). After
allowed to settle, it appears Sidney's shaky g
Protestant one: he must depend on faith for th
vision, where, to quote the Epistle to the Hebre
of things hoped for, the evidence of things not
emphasis).
The conceit that mimetic art can offer the evidence of things 'not seen'
haunted the imagination of early modern, especially Protestant, poets and
theorists, but for dramatists, who must rely on their audiences' active sus-
pension of disbelief, such notions bore directly on theatrical practice. In
its very nature as ephemeral spectacle and illusion, mimetic drama natu-
rally lent itself in the period to elaborate theatrical explorations of the ten-
sions which Sidney explores in theory in his Defence. The plays within
plays, the often improbable telescoping of events and disregard of the
so-called three unities (whether deliberately or out of ignorance), the
heightened degree of metatheatricality, the increasingly sophisticated use
of asides, the ubiquitous delight in the absurdity of impenetrable disguises
or in masked avengers delivering their justice behind the false show of
friendship - these are all familiar features of the period's most celebrated
dramas, none of which observe

Sidney's morally
reinterp edifying
resulting tension between the eva
and the eternal truths it might po
moral validity of mimetic drama
rhetorical exposition only complic
of this tension in contemporary d
The Tempest , is arguably more d
Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustu
the tragic farce of Doctor Faustus
tensions underlying the idea of m
be exposed at their most extreme.
Similarly to Sidney's Defence , M
Faustusoffers a very serious and d
mimesis which nevertheless const
and the playful. Based on an En
book, Marlowe's wild romp into t
contemporary audiences as a trage
hubristic, self-obsessed magus, 'sw
(Prologue, 20), 6 paying the ultim
insatiable thirst for supernatural p
there is something very odd abou
Calvinist religious framework dis
Faustus's wilful actions to the ine
Faustus acting the way he is b
damned because of the way he
optimism and Calvinist despair
moral dilemma in his Defence of
dynamics of what emerges as Mar
matic engagement with the domin
6 Christopher Marlowe: Doctor Faus

Bevington and Eric Rasmussen (M
throughout from the earlier 1604 A t
probably (though this is still much
Marlowe than the expanded version
quoting W W Greg, 'Perhaps to pr
judgment", but to prefer the B text is
J. B. Steane, Marlowe: A Critical Study
See Alan Sinfield, Literature in Pro
p. 116. For an especially acute analys
Alternative Trinity: Gnostic Heresy
pp. 22-41.
Faustus who cries in defiance 'A sound magician

typifies - indeed caricatures - the Giordano
the Renaissance world who firmly believed in m
self-improvement and ability to become one with
Viewed in this way, one can imagine a putat
head in knowing approval when, driven by such
his soul to the Devil and so damns himself. O
Calvinist in question is nodding knowingly, s
that Faustus's actions by definition single him ou
reprobates consigned to damnation from all ete
numbered among those denied salvation by su
the tragedy does not lie in Faustus's overreac
futile attempts to sue for grace once it is revea
his reprobate heart. Faustus's truly moving cry
play, 'O, I'll leap up to my God! Who pulls me d
lates this theological paradox in a dramatic hear
to God because he is pulled down by the sam
wings' with which he 'did mount above his reac
heavens', not his ambition, 'conspired' (Prologue
ing about his downfall. As the Prologue clearly
derful bit of mythological prolepsis, the forces
Icarian presumption are not merely those of inte
conscience, literalised in the play in the morality
Evil Angels, but real devils pulling at his legs
'Stretches out his arm and bends his ireful brow
wings to melt in the first place.
As numerous critics have therefore noted, a
repeat at length, the vision of humanity and div
the play is ambiguous.8 Marlowe's promethean p
to Sidney's putative poet-maker in the Defence
merely human by laying claim to supernatu
powers, only to be crushed by the infinite a
B Bcvington and Rasmussen's edition (pp. 15

bibliography and summary of the critical debate up
Healy's introductory essay, 4 Doctor Faustus ', in Patric
Companion to Christopher Marlowe (Cambridge 2004
newer brand of Marlovian critic who is more in
dramatic statements and its resulting spectacle tha
(p. 174). My reading takes the middle ground sin
corollary between the play's metaphysical concerns
ones. Contrary to what Healy avers, the play's comic f
the metaphysical seriousness of its themes, but is entir
earnestly mocks. In Sidney's Defen

initial anti-Platonic argument, whi
bravado, but in Marlowe's play it
damnation and eternal torment fo
the play's mockery is driven b
' Consummatum esť (II. i. 74) make
on the cross, but specifically of a C
by a self-annihilating insistence on
even in death.9 However, while th
the play, it extends far beyond th
perverse anti-Christian self-fashi
paradox of mimetic eternity Sidne
generally to an emerging stateme
modern mind conceived of reality
wishes to 'be eternised' (I. i. 15),
Renaissance poet or painter wou
Faustus's magical art, unlike the ar
it is entirely time-bound, to 'four
which time quickly expires in the
theatrical acts.
A theatrical performance binds the timelessness of poetry to time. A

play, whether or not it adheres to the unities of time and place, is entirely
time-bound, but the written poetry and words which are performed allow
the same performance to be repeated, theoretically, ad infinitum. The
irony of this emerging paradox was evidently not lost on Marlowe who,
like Sidney, knew his Plato well. Marlowe's predicament as a dramatist
seeking eternal fame through the transient spectacle of the stage is venti-
lated in Doctor Faustus through the main protagonist's moral-spiritual predi-
cament. Faustus, like all artists having to operate within a Christian-
Platonic scheme, is a victim not just of time, but of its causal, providential
fallacy. Reflecting on the fatalism inherent in Lutheran and Calvinist
theology, Faustus views with disgust the notion that sinners must 'die an
everlasting death': 'What doctrine call you this, Che será, será | What will
be, shall be? Divinity, adieu!' (I. i. 49-50). Like Sidney, Marlowe's Faustus
is also suspicious of a divinity which appeals to logical causality in time,
but he misses the point entirely since, unlike Sidney, he does not recognise
that the infinite on which the absolutes of divinity rest is precisely that
which is above causality and time. In other words, what Marlowe has his
9 See Adrian Streete, 4 " Consummatum esť : Calvinist Exegesis, Mimesis and Doctor
Faustus' , Literature & Theology, 15/2 (2001) pp. 140-54: 151.
Faustus misunderstand is the mimetic relati

becoming; he fails to comprehend that the irred
dental to mimetic detail is precisely that which
the truth of the transcendental absolute. What i
as the only criterion for abstract moral trut
becomes the intellectual crux of the unfolding t
ingly descends into more meaningless acts of e
theatrical conjuration, the ineffable reality wh
art to hell tightens its grip.
Doctor Faustus , however, is not a sober mora
condemned as a man from a Platonic-Calvin
magical art and the unfolding farce before us r
truth of exuberant, even if trivial, life liberated
immutability and tyranny. Like Sidney before h
the idea that it is the mimetic act of imaginativ
secures the truth-value of that which it canno
larly to Sidney, the playful manner in which th
referenced artistically in the play lends weight
and theological argument Marlowe is insinuatin
with Mephistopheles about the reality of hell is
this:
Faustus. First will I question with thee about hell.

Tell me, where is the place that men call hell?
Mephistopheles. Under the heavens.
Faustus. Ay, but whereabouts?
Mephistopheles. Within the bowels of these elements,
Where we are tortured and remain for ever.
Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed
In one self place, for where we are is hell,
And where hell is must we ever be.
And, to conclude, when all the world dissolves,
And every creature shall be purified,
All places shall be hell that is not heaven.
Faustus. Come, I think hell's a fable.
Mephistopheles. Ay, think so still, till experience change thy mind.
Faustus. Why, think'st thou then that Faustus shall be damned?
Mephistopheles . Ay, of necessity, for here's the scroll
Wherein thou hast given thy soul to Lucifer.
Faustus. Ay, and body too. But what of that?
Think'st thou that Faustus is so fond
To imagine that after this life there is any pain?
Tush, these are trifles and mer

Mephistopheles . But, Faustus, I am
For I am damned and am now in hell.
Faustus. How? Now in hell? Nay, an this be hell,
I'll willingly be damned here.
(II. i. 119-42)
Many critics of the play have wondered about this scene and what it says
about Faustus's delusional state of mind. He is faced by a devil from hell,
'an instance to prove' hell's existence, and yet he dismisses hell as a
Table'. Bevington and Rasmussen opine that 'Mephistopheles's answers,
for aili their startling candour, create uncertainty for Faustus because they
do seem to allow a kind of hell that an intellectual might actually enjoy.
Hell is evidently a place where one can dispute with colleagues'.10 In
other words, when Faustus agrees to damn himself he does so because on
some level he has convinced himself that hell might not be so bad after
all, a sort of eternal private club for the intellectually daring. However,
Faustus's inability to recognise the very idea of eternal torment in hell is
crucial in another way. After all, hell - the terminus of Faustus's doomed
journey - is made all the more real and threatening in the play because it
eschews mimetic detail. We find ourselves back in Sidney's ambiguous
'another nature'. Faustus frames his query about hell in ontological terms:
if hell exists, it must exist somewhere in relation to the natural order, and
Faustus wants to know where. Mephistopheles' reply, however, slyly shifts
from the ontological to the ethical: what is at first merely 'Under the
heavens' is soon revealed as that which 'hath no limits, nor is circum-
scribed I In one self place'. Hell according to the tormented devil before
us, likely sweeping his hand over the audience as well, is finally not a
place but an unnatural state of mind emptied of divine truth and abso-
lutes - an infinite space of deprivation and exclusion defined negatively
as all that which, at the end of time, 'is not heaven'.
Faustus's magical art, like the hell from which it draws its power, is an
instance to prove the truth of theological absolutes which otherwise
exceed mimetic representation, but it is a truth Faustus can never see.
Ironically, however, Faustus's inability to see this truth in a sense also liber-
ates him from it. Instead of embracing the idea that an act of creative
mimesis allows for an irruption of the transcendental within immanence,
Marlowe has Faustus fight the implications of this paradox by gradually
emptying his magical arts of any practical or ethical content.
10 Doctor Faustus , p. 26.
Initially, Faustus has grand schemes for his

'Glutted' with the conceit of unimaginable supe
Faustus speculates about all the things he might
the desire to 'Resolve me of all ambiguities'
exert his will on the political map of Europe:
I'll levy soldiers with the coin they bring

And chase the Prince of Parma from our
And reign sole king of all our provinces
(I. ii. 94-6)
However, none of these plans actually materialises. Faustus gains no real

power, nor any discernible new knowledge from his nefarious bargain;
even his ability to conjure devils, as it happens, is merely incidental.
Mephistopheles only obeys the conjuration because he is drawn to blasphe-
mers. As the devil explains, the conjuration was merely the cause of his
arrival ' per accidens' (I. iii. 47), providing Faustus with more firm proof -
this time couched in medieval scholastic terms - that a higher reality is
driving events, for only God, the Prime Mover, is the sole true efficient
cause which drives events in the mutable world. Having suppressed this
view of reality, Faustus has no choice but to embrace the illusory yet enter-
taining nature of his power. With Mephistopheles in tow Faustus travels
Europe as a conjuring actor, dramatist, and con artist, indulging in
ephemeral spectacle and buffoonery. The result, however, is a sort of
purity, for when mimetic acts point to nothing other than themselves all
that remains is the truth of an illusion enjoyed for its own sake.
In a moment of acute rapture in Act II, having battled it out with the
Good and Evil angels, Faustus points out that he would have taken his
own life long ago 'Had not sweet pleasure conquered deep despair' (II. iii.
25). Faustus then immediately qualifies this 'sweet pleasure' as literary
pleasure:
Have not I made Homer sing to me

Of Alexander's love and Oenone's death?
And hath not he that built the walls of Thebes
With ravishing sound of his melodious harp
Made music with my Mephistopheles?
Why should I die, then, or basely despair?
I am resolved Faustus shall ne'er repent.
(II.iii.26- 32)
Unlike Sidney, who reads Hom

Faustus loses himself absolutely in
sake. Faustus's wish to play out th
later in Act V ('I will be Paris, and
Wittenberg be sacked', V i. 98-9
idea through a process of rever
image to compete for a claim on t
of heaven and hell. When Faust
(V i. 97) the syntactical echo of
that is not heaven' could well be deliberate: it allows the truth of the con-
jured Helen to compete with the truth of heaven, and for a brief moment
it is the former, literally seductive, truth which gains the upper hand. Not
surprisingly, therefore, when in the passage above Faustus thinks of
Homer he immediately also thinks of the myth of Amphion, who used
the magical lyre given to him by Hermes to sing into existence the walls
of Thebes. In this period, the myth of Amphion often stood side by the
side with the myth of Orpheus as a popular topos through which to
explore the demiurgic, but potentially hubristic, powers of music and by
extension of poetry as well. Such is its relevance to Sidney in his Defence ,
where the myth of Amphion provides him with yet another metaphor for
the limitless creative potential of poetry that can move men to morally
virtuous action:
So, as Amphion was said to move stones with his poetry to build
Thebes, and Orpheus to be listened to by beasts, indeed, stony and
beasdy people; so among the Romans were Livius Andronicus and
Ennius. So in the Italian language the first that made it aspire to be a
treasure-house of science were the poets Dante, Boccaccio, and
Petrarch. So in our English were Gower and Chaucer, after whom,
encouraged and delighted with their excellent fore-going, others have
followed, to beautify our mother tongue, as well in the same kind as
in other arts. (p. 213)
Marlowe's Faustus, however, gleefully points out that Amphion made his
music in duet with 'my Mephistopheles'. Like Sidney, Marlowe also insists
that poetry can 'move stones', but unlike Sidney he has no qualms about
its devilish nature; it is devilishly unnatural because, in the immediate
context of the dramatic spectacle, poetry and its imaginative creations are
more alive and more real than any 'natural' theological proposition which
the spectacle can only exclude, and it is for that reason, not some obscure
Calvinist decree, that Faustus 'shall ne'er repent'.
The fatalism of Faustus's position is thus not t

Indeed, mimesis is all that he can cling to. Faus
fritter away what little time he has, as he indulg
pseudo-humanistic parlour games. As a guest
for example, he conjures on demand a likene
tation - of Alexander the Great and his 'par
course moves from history to mythology by con
of Helen of Troy, with whom he subsequently f
most memorable scene, Faustus, enamoured wit
creation, begs of Helen, ťmake me immortal wit
in reality kissing a devil made to look like H
immortal soul to fly away. Rather than gaining
art, the conjurer-poet, lost in narcissistic desire
immortality and damns himself (or, from the C
his state of reprobation which was only masked
The Christian moralist in the audience would in
where Alexander and Helen are shown to be m
but we are constantly reminded that it is a ver
guise. Having inspected the apparently very rea
paramour's neck, the Emperor concludes, despit
trary, that 'Sure these are no spirits, but the t
those two deceased princes' (TV i. 72-3). The i
the substantial quality of a body based on its ou
been lost on an educated contemporary audience
unfolding comedy. And yet, we are also awar
Helen we watch passing over the stage are in fa
devils, pretending to be historical and mytholog
Emperor's final incredulity at the improbability
affirmation of the actors' convincing performa
the dramatist's ingenuity in conjuring such an im
The meditation in all of these scenes is not, th
irony of the reprobate poet or dramatist damn
tragic appeal of mimetic art when it is perform
Calvinist tyranny. Even the probably corrupt s
pregnant Duchess of Vanholt, in which Faustus commands
Mephistopheles to fetch out-of-season grapes from the other side of the
world, ties in with the theme of fraudulent mimesis if we recall that the
legendary Greek painter Zeuxis was said by Pliny to have deceived birds
with his very realistic painting of grapes. However, unlike Zeuxis' grapes,
which are merely an illusion, the grapes the Duchess enjoys are both real
and unnatural for being out of season - a product of magical conveyance
which diabolically bends the law of nature in both the descriptive and the
prescriptive sense. As the Duche

good to be true: 'Believe me, Maste
e'er I tasted in my life before' (TV
tragically, hides, then, in the
Verisimilitude in this case initiall
effectively creates 'another nature
conjured reality is not merely illuso
our own good. In fact, it is so real
to obscure the greater inferred
promises of eternal life. Faustus
Renaissance artist's world - is p
the play through the very prot
unfolding on the stage before us, w
its deliberate improbability, and t
transports us across Europe to sho
essence the same damnable art w
palace in Rome or the court of t
Mephistophelian art triumphs in M
sitory'sweet pleasure' is more real,
acter, than the very real but i
un-reproducible, transcendenta
prance around the stage in their f
we realise that the truth of hell h
truth of theatre. Lucifer's exhortation cuts across the mimetic divide to
address the audience as well: 'Talk not of paradise nor creation, but mark
this show. Talk of the devil, and nothing else' (II. ii. 105-6).
Sidney and Marlowe wrote their two genetically different but concep-
tually congruent texts at a time when the dominant world-view indeed
condemned them to hell for their art, but Marlowe goes a step further in
allowing his art to condemn finally the very idea of hell. An inverse view
of this paradox would hold with Sidney that it is precisely this resistance
to mimesis which renders the dogmatic truth of hell so powerfully mena-
cing, especially when Faustus is carried away by devils, kicking and
screaming, to an off-stage eternity of torment. But if hell is off-stage and
heaven is that which at the end of time is not hell, then where does it
leave the space that remains empty on stage when the play's time expires
and the devils with their disguises have exited? In the Epilogue the
Chorus steps into this empty space and calls upon the audience to
Regard this hellish fcill,

Whose fiendful fortune may exhort the wise
Only to wander at unlawful things,
Whose deepness doth entice such forward

To practice more than heavenly power per
(Epilogue, 4-8)
If one had to guess, the most likely reaction t

an incongruous mixture of enthusiastic applause
religious quaking. At the same time, however
about the play in performance that have come
indication of the sort of impact it had on its
then it seems that it could be quite unsettling t
ditioned to believe in the absolute truth of hell. P
anecdote about a performance of the play in
date in which the actors on a sudden 'were all d
ing other in the ear, for they were all persuade
many amongst them'.11 Whether or not this an
something of the mimetic confusion Marlowe's v
engenders. If the actors were not sure whether
them, how was the audience likely to react? It is
to confuse the Elizabethan stage with a pulpit,
is concerned. Puritans - the sort of 'wise' men a
notionally appeals to - certainly did not attend t
eyes was the single most reviled source for mor
his actors, and their audience, the stage is for a
the only imaginable heaven. However, as the
cates it probably never was a simple case of reli
overruled by simple fun, but of a deeply unset
ment and spectacle bordering on very guilty
conceit that art may offer its own truth which
of theological dogma finally runs out on its ow
Marlowe's play, leaving behind, as it does in S
ment in his Defence , only the faint shimmer of p
However, where Sidney leaves his readers wond
take his highly original and potentially here
Marlowe's audience is left with the limidess, ev
free, licence to 'wander at unlawful things'. Both
and Marlowe's Doctor Faustus are celebrated toda
rhetorical flair, and dark sense of playful irony
11 The Exeter anecdote is quoted along other anec

Bevington and Rasmussen, pp. 50-1.
celebrated for their entirely serio

the Christian-Platonic platitudes
dominated the theory of art an
Marlowe's is the triumph not of h
a creative imagination that knows

The Paradox of Mimesis

Enviado por

Dados do documento

Direitos autorais

Formatos disponíveis

Compartilhar este documento

Compartilhar ou incorporar documento

Opções de compartilhamento

Você considera este documento útil?

Este conteúdo é inapropriado?

Direitos autorais:

Formatos disponíveis

The Paradox of Mimesis

Enviado por

Direitos autorais:

Formatos disponíveis

The Paradox of Mimesis in Sidney's "Defence of Poesie" and Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus"

Author(s): Noam Reisner

Western PHILOSOPHY has always framed the question of mimetic art,

potentially hubristic - to celebrate the created world through a reverse

The most intriguing theoretical exploration of

1 There seems to be an overall critical consensu

nature is equally tainted by the F

Only the poet, disdaining to be tied to any such subjection, lifted up

Sidney's theory of the inspired poet's ability to create 'another nature' is a

super-natural. However, in its morally prescript

Poesy therefore is an art of imitation, for so A

While one would indeed expect Sidney to invok

4 While Sidney read Aristotle at Oxford, perhaps ev

that poetry is a fit and necessary

Ingeniously, therefore, having attacked the Platonic suspicion of poetry,

Neither let it be deemed too saucy a comparison to balance the

An argument which started hand in hand with

'Was' and 'Shall be' are generated forms of Tim

appropriate term; 4 was' and 'wil

In Sidney's corresponding schem

5 Trans. R. G. Bury, Locb Classical Library.

fallen man's will is 'infected' by sin such ac

dramas, none of which observe

6 Christopher Marlowe: Doctor Faus

Faustus who cries in defiance 'A sound magician

B Bcvington and Rasmussen's edition (pp. 15

earnestly mocks. In Sidney's Defen

A theatrical performance binds the timelessness of poetry to time. A

Faustus misunderstand is the mimetic relati

Faustus. First will I question with thee about hell.

Tush, these are trifles and mer

10 Doctor Faustus , p. 26.

Initially, Faustus has grand schemes for his

I'll levy soldiers with the coin they bring

However, none of these plans actually materialises. Faustus gains no real

Have not I made Homer sing to me

Unlike Sidney, who reads Hom

The fatalism of Faustus's position is thus not t

prescriptive sense. As the Duche

Regard this hellish fcill,

Whose deepness doth entice such forward

If one had to guess, the most likely reaction t

11 The Exeter anecdote is quoted along other anec

celebrated for their entirely serio

Você também pode gostar