Plato's well-known attack on the poets begins with the assertion that poetry is a kind of 'mimesis'. The word is evidently used in two senses. Such mimesis can harm the actor if the character imitated is bad.
Narrative poetry represents people's behaviour.
Mimesis in this sense is also exemplified by reflections in mirrors and representational painting. To produce such representations, Plato says, one does not need knowledge of the thing represented, but only of how it appears. Children and fools' are similarly taken in by trompe-l'oeil paintings. R.J.H. Bibliography Plato, Republic x . 1. aesthetics, history of The Oxford Companion to Philosophy 2.