Psychic Mimesis From Bible and Homer to Now

How did we develop our sense of inner life? This book follows Auerbach’s Mimesis, journeying over two millennia through Western literature from Bible and Homer to the present to answer this question. We discover discrete and different trends, yet also three overarching, cross-cultural, and cross-temporal themes that endure through time.

How did we develop our current views of inner life? Psychic Mimesis From Bible and Homer to the Present: Inner Life Over Time reaches back to Biblical and Homeric times, then sweeps across over two millennia of Western literature to answer this question. We discover that while there are discrete contributions from different eras/cultures about inner life—volition, ego ideal, superego, development as a journey, relatedness, even the fact of innerness—there are also at least three trends that have endured from the beginning of our literature and continue as ostinatos beneath each theme and variation of development. These are emotions and our need to conceal and reveal secrets and attachment that is our ability to explore from a secure base. This book takes us through the journey of discovery to arrive at our twenty-first century sense of self and inner life. We follow Auerbach’s text, Mimesis, as a guide through the literature, but add surprises such as Maimonides’ Guide to the perplexed or Rousseau’s Confessions to arrive at the sense that while there are particularities to eras and cultures, there is also something universal that resonates with us and endures.

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Mimesis: Representation of Inner Reality in Western Mind(s)

Chapter 1. Father–Son Reunions: Interpersonal and Inner Lives of Two Ancient

Cultures, and Universal Emotions

Chapter 2. The Son of God: Figura, or Betzelem Adonai, in the Shadow of God

Chapter 3. Ovid’s Incarnations: Instability and Its Passionate Inner Causes

Chapter 4. Maimonides (12th Century): Concealed and Revealed Life

Chapter 5. Dante and Virgil: Rising from Despair (1265–1321)

Chapter 6: Shakespeare: The Leap from Lear to Prospero;

from Tragic to Wise; from Despair to Integrity (and Self-Reflection)

Chapter 7. Rousseau’s Confessions and the Birth of Autobiography as a Genre (and Its Twin--Inner Development) (1700s)

Chapter 8. Enchanting Tales, Enchanted Children: The Timelessness of Fairy Tales

(Ancient Egypt to the Present)

Chapter 9. Flaubert: Testing the Tensile Strength Between Style and Character (1800s)

Chapter 10. From the “I” to the “We”: Saul Bellow’s Lifetime Evolution

Chapter 11. Denoument/Inner Life’s Life Course

References

Index

About the Author