Styles of Mimesis

The project Styles of Mimesis (2008–2010) explores central issues of literary representation: the ways in which literature produces its peculiar reality effects and negotiates its relationship to value systems connecting it to the world of everyday experience and ethics, as well as to different ideologies, world views and fields of knowledge. It brings together the interconnected though often separately studied questions of style and mimesis and, from this starting point, opens up a new kind of discussion not only on the relationship between style and representation but also on the ways literary texts convey ethical values as well as emotional cognition.

The project is funded by The Academy of Finland and directed by Professor Pirjo Lyytikäinen (Finnish Literature, University of Helsinki).

Project researchers:

Dr Saija Isomaa (Finnish Literature, University of Helsinki)
Rhetorical Genres in Literature: The Tendentious Novel and Drama in 19th-Century Finnish Literature and Literary Debate

Adjunct Professor Sari Kivistö (Helsinki Collegium of Advanced Studies)
University Satire and Academic Humour in the Early Modern Age

Sanna Nyqvist MA (Comparative Literature, University of Helsinki)
Ethics of Style: Intertextuality and Morality in Contemporary British Fiction

Dr Merja Polvinen (English Language and Literature, University of Helsinki)
Cognitive Approaches to Metafiction and Mimesis in Contemporary English Literature

Dr Riikka Rossi (Finnish Literature, University of Helsinki)
Everyday Spaces. "Everyday" in Twentieth Century Neo-naturalist Fiction

This project has both theoretical and empirical objectives. By combining and modifying several contemporary insights pertaining to mimesis, stylistics and cognitive analysis, it aims at developing a fresh theoretical framework for literary studies and a new methodological approach to reading literature as “poietic” mimesis. Special emphasis is given to mimesis as the representation of everyday life, to intertextual stylistics, and, in the field of cognitive studies, to its contributions to understanding ethics, emotions and narrative. These theoretical reflections are connected to the empirical study of literary texts. The project will produce, on the one hand, close readings in light of theoretical thinking and, on the other, theoretical discussions enlightened and enriched by empirical findings and the process of translating particularities into more general patterns of knowledge.