A study on the relation between imitation and imagination in Italian poetics between the second half of the 16th and 17th centuries

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In 16th century Italian poetics, the concept of "imitation" played an important role. This "imitation"-the method of reproducing from an object its faithful image- had aspects opposed to the poet's personal imagination. This study tried to investigate what 16th- and 17th- century Italian poets thought of the relation between "imitation" and "imagination", by analyzing important poetics between the second half of the 16th and first half of the 17th centuries. Three tendencies were found: (1) "imagination" was perceived as being complementary to "imitation"; (2) "imitation" was respected but "imagination" was considered important regardless of the former; (3) "imitation" was perceived negatively.