Mimologics

Mimologiques : Voyage En Cratylie, Vol. 2

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by Gerard Genette,

Translated by Thais E. Morgan,

by Gerald Prince

University of Nebraska Press

Due/Published May 1995, 446 pages, paper

ISBN 0803270445

Do words - their sounds and shapes, their lengths and patterns - imitate the world? Mimology says they do. First argued in Plato's Cratylus more than two thousand years ago, mimology has left an important mark in virtually every major art and artistic theory thereafter. Fascinating and many-faceted, mimology is the basis of language sciences and incites occasional hilarity. Its complicated traditions require a sure grip but a light touch. One of the few scholars capable of giving mimology such genial attention is Gerard Genette. Genette treats matters as basic and staid as the alphabet and as reverberating as the letter R in ur-linguistics.