...presence of misery, as a mother weeps over her babe when she remembers that death may take it from her. The delight of tragedy proceeds from our consciousness...murders and treasons real, they would please no more. When the imagination is recreated by a painted landscape, the trees are not supposed capable to give...

...variants of Aristotle's mimetic explanation include those of Samuel Johnson and David Hume. For Johnson, "the delight of tragedy proceeds from our consciousness...realities, but because they bring realities to mind" ("Preface to Shakespeare," in Arthur Sherbo, ed., Johnson on Shakespeare [New Haven: Yale University...

...pregnant phrase, 'with all the credit due to drama'. Indeed, this is the source of our pleasure in drama: 'The delight of tragedy proceeds from our consciousness...murders and treasons real, they would please no more.' Verisimilitude, or the poet's truth to nature, demands consistency of characterisation and dialogue...

...auditor what he would himself feel, if he were to do or suffer what is there feigned to be suffered or done. The reflection that strikes the heart is not,...realities, but because they bring realities to mind. 30 As in reading a book, Johnson tells us, we retain "our consciousness of fiction." This is why the...

...race ("Frequent; usual; ordinary"). Art is not life, but it succeeds in proportion as it invokes life: "Imitations produce pain or pleasure not because they...realities, but because they bring realities to mind" (Preface 78). Fearing the power of art less than Johnson does, Hume develops a psychological aesthetics...

...suffered or to be done [...]. The delight of tragedy proceeds from our conscious41 Ibid. p. 76. ness of fiction; if we thought murders and treasons real, they would please no more.42 Here, in the tradition of Aristotle, the arbitrary inventions of the playwright, subjected...

...presence of misery, as a mother weeps over her babe, when she remembers that death may take it from her. The delight of tragedy proceeds from our consciousness...murders and treasons real, they would please no more <In/13; Hm/92>. Imitations produce pain or pleasure, not because they are mistaken for realities, but...

...how the drama moves, if it is not credited. It is credited with all the credit due to a drama .... The delight of tragedy proceeds from our consciousness...thought murders and treasons real, they would please no more.67 So with novels, and especially Thackeray's novels. They provide occasion for reflection and...

...deceived: The truth is, that the spectators are always in their senses . . . '. He shrewdly added: 'Imitations produce pain or pleasure, not because...for realities, but because they bring realities to mind.'14 Actually, imitation, in a much more limited sense than Johnson's, is a highly conspicuous...

...factual. Nevertheless the fact remains that fiction is fiction. As Samuel Johnson cogently observes: "The delight of tragedy proceeds from our consciousness...murders and treasons real, they would please no more" (1960, 39). And since playing with conventions is virtually a convention of the novel, one should come...