Mimesis criticism is a method of interpreting texts in relation to their literary or cultural models. Mimesis, or imitation (imitatio), was a widely used rhetorical tool in antiquity up until the 18th century's romantic emphasis on originality. Mimesis criticism looks to identify intertextual relationships between two texts that go beyond simple echoes, allusions, citations, or redactions. The effects of imitation are usually manifested in the later text by means of distinct characterization, motifs, and/or plot structure.

As a critical method, mimesis criticism has been pioneered by Dennis MacDonald, especially in relation to New Testament and other early Christian narratives imitating the "canonical" works of Classical Greek literature.

Greek rhetorician Aristotle (4th century b.c.e.) discusses the rhetorical technique of mimesis or imitation; what Aristotle describes, however, is the author's imitation of nature, not earlier literary or cultural models.

Philodemus of Gadara (1st century b.c.e.), an Epicurean philosopher and poet and one of Virgil's teachers, affirms that writers of prose histories and fictions used literary models. He writes (rhetorically) in book five of On Poetry, "Who would claim that the writing of prose is not reliant on the Homeric poems?" (5.30.36-31.)

A Greek historian and rhetorician from the late first century b.c.e./early first century c.e., Dionysius of Halicarnassus represents a change from the Aristotelian rhetorical notion of mimesis, from imitation of nature's to imitation of literature. His most important work in this respect, On Mimesis (Περὶ μιμήσεως, Perì mimēseōs), survives only in fragments. Apparently, most of this work concerned the proper selection of literary models.

Roman rhetorician M. Fabius Quintilianus published his twelve-volume Institutio oratoria around 95 c.e. In book 10, Quintilian - who was well-read with respect to both Greek and Latin rhetoricians, including Dionysius - gives advice to teachers who are instructing students in oration. He tells them that, by the time students begin composition, they should be so well-versed in exemplary models that are able to imitate them without physically consulting them (10.1.5). Quintilian writes,

For in everything which we teach examples are more effective even than the rules which are taught in the schools, so long as the student has reached a stage when he can appreciate such examples without the assistance of a teacher, and can rely on his own powers to imitate them. (10.1.15; Butler, LCL)

He also advises that students constantly reread the exemplary models (10.1.19), not only in sections but all the way through (10.1.20), so that they might be empowered to imitate these models with more craft and subtlety.