Mimesis has been a cardinal concept for those traditions of aesthetics, from antiquity to the present, that focus on the status and value of artistic representation. The semantics of the Greek term mimēsis cover much more than simple imitation; its senses include resemblance, dramatic impersonation, and other species of correspondence or likeness. The idea of mimesis came to designate the relationship between certain art forms (poetry, dance, music, painting/sculpture) and the aspects of reality they are capable of depicting or evoking. Although some strands of mimeticist thinking appeal to standards of verisimilitude and mirroring, it is mistaken to reduce all models of mimesis to a single canon of realism.

Plato's highly influential approach to mimesis is less straightforward than usually claimed. From Cratylus to Laws, he applies the language of mimesis to numerous relationships of ontological and/or semantic dependence (even, in Timaeus, e.g., 39e...