Mimesis (“[imitative] representation”) is a crucial, but polyvalent concept in literary theory, art theory, and other fields, the meaning of which has changed much through the course of history and remains controversial to this day. An extremely fluid spectrum of connotations was already in place in Greek antiquity. Mimesis (Greek mímēsis) is derived from mímos (“mime”), and in the fifth-century BCE it meant portraying something in such a way as to resemble something else. P…