More than half a century after its translation into English, Erich
Auerbach's Mimesis remains a masterpiece of literary criticism. A
brilliant display of erudition, wit, and wisdom, his exploration of how
great European writers from Homer to Virginia Woolf depicted reality has
taught generations how to read Western literature. This new expanded
edition includes a substantial essay in introduction by Edward Said as
well as an essay, never before translated into English, in which
Auerbach responds to his critics.
A German Jew, Auerbach was forced out of his professorship at the
University of Marburg in 1935. He left for Turkey, where he taught at
the state university in Istanbul. There he wrote Mimesis, publishing
it in German after the end of the war. Displaced as he was, Auerbach
produced a work of great erudition that contains no footnotes, basing
his arguments instead on searching, illuminating readings of key
passages from his primary texts. His aim was to show how from antiquity
to the twentieth century literature progressed toward ever more
naturalistic and democratic forms of representation. This essentially
optimistic view of European history now appears as a defensive--and
impassioned--response to the inhumanity he saw in the Third Reich.
Ranging over works in Greek, Latin, Spanish, French, Italian, German,
and English, Auerbach used his remarkable skills in philology and
comparative literature to refute any narrow form of nationalism or
chauvinism, in his own day and ours.
For many readers, both inside and outside the academy, Mimesis is
among the finest works of literary criticism ever written. This
Princeton Classics edition includes a substantial introduction by Edward
Said as well as an essay in which Auerbach responds to his critics.
