ABSTRACT
The word mimesis applies to realism, because such writers as Honore de Balzac, Emile Zola, and Theodore Dreiser have imitated life, perhaps more strenuously and, as they certainly hoped, more honestly than before. A man is called a poet not because he makes verses, claims Aristotle, but because he makes plots through the representation of action: mythos, mimesis, praxis, the three inseparables. But, as Aristotle is well aware, a plot is not an easy thing to achieve with appropriate success, although the accumulation of literature even as early as his experience reveals a vast plethora of attempts. The issue for them is indeed a renascence, in that they felt that the new vernacular compositions must revive the forms of classical literature in both plot and diction. William Shakespeare is using plot not as a figuring forth of action which could logically or possibly occur in history.
