Introduction

The introduction sets out the argument of the book. It suggests that the imitation of authors (imitatio) is not primarily a matter of verbal appropriation but of learning practices from earlier texts. That process is intrinsically hard to describe, and as a result discussions of the topic in the rhetorical tradition relied on a rich store of metaphors. These were themselves to become part of the practice of imitation. The introduction describes the various kinds of imitatio which developed from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries: ‘adaptive’ imitation, in which an earlier text is made ‘apt’ to new times, and ‘formal imitation’, in which an author imitates not the exact words, but the favoured rhetorical structures of an earlier writer. It explains how the word ‘model’ came to be used of an imitated text, and explores the relationship between imitation, plagiarism, and ideas about intellectual property. It explains how regarding an ‘author’ as a potentially open-ended series of texts distinguished by their style and form connects early modern theories of imitation with contemporary interests in artificial intelligence. It briefly suggests some implications of the subject for writing outside Europe, and explains how this book departs from earlier studies of the topic in its scope and argument.