Imitating Authors

Colin Burrow gives us an original literary history of imitation from an esteemed scholar and literary critic and a fascinating account of how authors from the earliest stages of Western literature to the present day have imitated each other. This book covers an impressive range of writers including Plato, Virgil, Lucretius, Petrarch, Cervantes, Ben Jonson, Milton, Pope, Wordsworth, Mary Shelley, and Kazuo Ishiguro. Burrow offers clear explanations of difficult concepts and complex histories and explains key concepts which enabled classical texts to have an influence on later writing and brings the discussion up to date by studying contemporary fictions about clones and imitation human beings and the future of imitation.