The Perils Of Uglytown: Studies In Structural Misanthropology From Plato To Rembrandt Project Muse Upcc Books

With characteristic wit, Harry Berger, Jr., brings his flair for close reading to texts and images across two millennia that illustrate what he calls “structural misanthropology.” Beginning with a novel reading of Plato, Berger emphasizes Socrates’s self-acknowledged failures. The dialogues, he shows, offer up, only to dispute, a misanthropic polis. The Athenian city-state, they worry, is founded on a social order motivated by apprehension―both the desire to take and the fear of being taken. In addition to suggesting new political and philosophical dimensions to Platonic thought, Berger’s attention to rhetorical practice offers novel ways of parsing the dialogic method itself. In the book’s second half, Berger revisits and revises his earlier accounts of Italian humanism, Elizabethan drama, and Dutch painting. Berger shows how structural misanthropology helps us to read the competitive practices that characterize Renaissance writing and art, whether in Machiavelli’s constitutional prostheses, Shakespeare’s pageants of humiliation, or the elbow jabs of Dutch portraiture. The Perils Of Uglytown Develops A New Concept, Structural Misanthropology, And Traces Its Operation First In The Dialogues Of Plato And Then In The Work Of Humanists, Playwrights, And Painters Of The Renaissance In Italy, England, And The Netherlands-- Machine Generated Contents Note: -- 1. A Polar Model Of Culture Change: Introduction To Structural Misanthropology -- Part 1. Misanthropology In Plato's Dialogues -- 2. Critical Logography: Thucydides And Plato On The Politics Of Communication -- 3 Katabasis And Narrative -- 4. Safemindedness: Lysis And Crito -- 5. Dying Angry: The Wrath Of Socrates In Plato's Phaedo -- 6. More Than A Talking Head: Socrates And Cephalus In Republic 1 -- 7. The Perils Of Uglytown: Structural Misanthropology In The Republic -- 8. Adeimantus And Glaucon -- 9 Apprehension In The Timaeus: Plato's Nervous Narrator -- Part 2. Misanthropology In Early Modern Culture -- 10. Cybernetic Alienation: Prosthetic Strategies In Alberti, Leonardo, Castiglione, And Machiavelli -- 11. Collecting Body Parts In Leonardo's Cave: Vasari's Lives And The Erotics Of Obscene Connoisseurship -- 12. Fencéd Ears: The King's Body Impolitic In Gorboduc, King Lear, And Richard Ii -- 13. Prospero's Humiliation -- 14. Bad Boys And Hipsters: Shakespeare's Iago And Rembrandt's Rembrandt -- 15. The Drama Of Competitive Posing: Portrait Plots In Hals And Rembrandt. Harry Berger, Jr. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Cover Contents Preface 1. A Polar Model of Culture Change: Introduction Structural Misanthropology PART I. MISANTHROPOLOGY IN PLATO’S DIALOGUES 2. The Discourse of Pleonexia: Thucydides and Plato on the Politics of Communication 3. Dying Angry: The Wrath of Socrates in Plato’s Phaedo 4. More Than a Talking Head: Socrates and Kephalos in Republic 1 5. The Perils of Uglytown: Structural Misanthropology in Plato’s Republic 6. Adeimantus and Glaucon 7. Four Virtues in the Republic: (1) Wisdom 8. Four Virtues in the Republic: (2) Courage, The Well-Born Lye 9. Four Virtues in the Republic: (3) Temperance 10. Four Virtues in the Republic: (4) Justice 11. Apprehension in the Timaeus: Plato’s Nervous Narrator PART II. MISANTHROPOLOGY IN EARLY MODERN CULTURE 12. Cybernetic Alienation: Prosthetic Strategies in Alberti, Leonardo, Castiglione, and Machiavelli 13. Collecting Body Parts in Leonardo’s Cave: Vasari’s Lives and the Erotics of Obscene Connoisseurship 14. Prospero’s Humiliation 15. The Drama of Competitive Posing: Portrait Plots in Hals and Rembrandt Notes Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W Y Z In 'The Perils of Uglytown', Harry Berger, Jr., considers a variety of texts and images ranging from those of Thucydides and Plato to those of Shakespeare and Rembrandt. The Introduction explains the key concept of the study, structural misanthropology, a variant on Claude Levi-Strauss's idea of structural anthropology. Part I explores its activity in several Platonic dialogues: 'Lysis', 'Crito', 'Phaedo', 'The Republic', and 'Timaeus'. Part II turns to the Renaissance in Italy, England, and the Netherlands. Structural misanthropology is discussed first in the work of several Italian humanists (Alberti, Leonardo, Castiglione, and Vasari), then in English drama (Gorbuduc and several plays by Shakespeare), and finally in group portraits by Hals and Rembrandt. 'The Perils of Uglytown'applies and brings up to date the methods of interpretation Berger has developed during the past half-century in his many studies of literature, drama, philosophy, social and cultural studies, and the visual arts