Mim- rooted terms in pre-Platonic texts

One of the most essential and controversial terms in Art Theory is Mimesis. According to their philosophical views, Plato and Aristotle - who are among the first art theoreticians- each had his own interpretation of Mimesis; And this difference of views is one of the most important elements in evaluating of artworks along the aesthetic history. In this paper we tried to give an almost comprehensive understanding of the concept of Mimesis with contemplation in origins of this word and in its cognates in Greek language (mimos, mimema, mimeistai). Along that, we studied Greek texts that these words were used in them and thereby we tried to determine why these two philosophers - Plato and Aristotle – had adopted two different attitudes towards the concept of Mimesis. The outcomes of our analyses showed that mim-rooted terms in pre-platonic texts signified on transference of meaning through "enactment". Their origin was ritual and their primary object was human or animal behaviors and acts. Moreover, primary medium of this concept was dance and then it generalized to other types of art. What was common in all these words was the idea of correspondence or equality; In other words, these works or acts had chosen a hypothetical equivalent in real world as a role model. Yet this correspondence was not a pure copy but rather in some cases, this hypothetical pattern even had no concrete existence.