<P> It was also Plato and Aristotle who contrasted mimesis with diegesis (Greek διήγησις). Mimesis shows, rather than tells, by means of directly represented action that is enacted . Diegesis, however, is the telling of the story by a narrator; the author narrates action indirectly and describes what is in the characters' minds and emotions . The narrator may speak as a particular character or may be the "invisible narrator" or even the "all - knowing narrator" who speaks from above in the form of commenting on the action or the characters . </P> <P> In Book III of his Republic (c. 373 BCE), Plato examines the style of poetry (the term includes comedy, tragedy, epic and lyric poetry): All types narrate events, he argues, but by differing means . He distinguishes between narration or report (diegesis) and imitation or representation (mimesis). Tragedy and comedy, he goes on to explain, are wholly imitative types; the dithyramb is wholly narrative; and their combination is found in epic poetry . When reporting or narrating, "the poet is speaking in his own person; he never leads us to suppose that he is any one else"; when imitating, the poet produces an "assimilation of himself to another, either by the use of voice or gesture". In dramatic texts, the poet never speaks directly; in narrative texts, the poet speaks as himself or herself . </P> <P> In his Poetics, Aristotle argues that kinds of poetry (the term includes drama, flute music, and lyre music for Aristotle) may be differentiated in three ways: according to their medium, according to their objects, and according to their mode or manner (section I); "For the medium being the same, and the objects the same, the poet may imitate by narration--in which case he can either take another personality, as Homer does, or speak in his own person, unchanged--or he may present all his characters as living and moving before us" (section III). </P> <P> Though they conceive of mimesis in quite different ways, its relation with diegesis is identical in Plato's and Aristotle's formulations . </P>

Who defended art as an imitation of nature