On The Development Of "Imitation" In Western Literary Theory And Its Present Circumstance

"Imitation" is one of the important theoretical ones that have been handed down in Western literary theory. It has the theoretical value that can not be ignored because it studies the origin and the nature of the art by exploring the relationship between art and the reality. It formed in earlier period, with a long and rich development process and in the process it created a lot of theoretical results .It is precisely because of its long history, the theory about "imitation" scattered in various periods of the history of literary theory so it is difficult to form a systematic understanding about it, and its current situation should be found in today's society. This paper analyzes the development process through describing the theory of the"imitation"and has a further inspection of its circumstance on this basis, thereby, forming the awareness about the ancient theory.This paper is divided into four parts to accomplish the above tasks: First, theory is defined from the perspective of the "imitation" of the two styles. that is, as a "source" and "flow" of different sense emulation; Secondly, "imitation" for the development process of sorting out a brief description as a basis for further analysis; Next, from the target, the way and the media of the imitation that related to the theory to discussed its theoretical characteristics in specific areas. Finally, to objectively evaluate and discuss their reasons for the decline and the prospects for development about "imitation" theory .