Jeffrey Morrison
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198159124
- eISBN:
- 9780191673504
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198159124.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This book examines the pivotal role of Johann Joachim Winckelmann as an arbiter of classical taste. It identifies the key features of Winckelmann's treatment of classical beauty, particularly in his ...
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This book examines the pivotal role of Johann Joachim Winckelmann as an arbiter of classical taste. It identifies the key features of Winckelmann's treatment of classical beauty, particularly in his famous descriptions, and investigates his teaching of the appreciation of beauty. The work identifies and examines the point at which theory and descriptive method are merged in a practical attempt to offer aesthetic education. The publications and correspondence of Winckelmann's pupils are offered as criteria for judging the success of his mission, eventually casting doubt upon his concept of aesthetic education, both in theory and practice. The final chapter of the book is concerned with Goethe's reception of Winckelmann, which shows unusual sensitivity to his work's aesthetic core. It also shows how Goethe's own writing on Italy reveals a process of independent aesthetic education akin to Winckelmann's and distinct from his pupils. The work is founded in close textual analysis but also covers the principles of the aesthetic education, the value of the Grand Tour, and the role of Rome in the European imagination.Less
This book examines the pivotal role of Johann Joachim Winckelmann as an arbiter of classical taste. It identifies the key features of Winckelmann's treatment of classical beauty, particularly in his famous descriptions, and investigates his teaching of the appreciation of beauty. The work identifies and examines the point at which theory and descriptive method are merged in a practical attempt to offer aesthetic education. The publications and correspondence of Winckelmann's pupils are offered as criteria for judging the success of his mission, eventually casting doubt upon his concept of aesthetic education, both in theory and practice. The final chapter of the book is concerned with Goethe's reception of Winckelmann, which shows unusual sensitivity to his work's aesthetic core. It also shows how Goethe's own writing on Italy reveals a process of independent aesthetic education akin to Winckelmann's and distinct from his pupils. The work is founded in close textual analysis but also covers the principles of the aesthetic education, the value of the Grand Tour, and the role of Rome in the European imagination.
Frederick C. Beiser
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199573011
- eISBN:
- 9780191722202
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199573011.003.0007
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics, History of Philosophy
This chapter focuses on Johann Joachim Winckelmann, a student of Baumgarten who later became one of the most celebrated writers of his day. Winckelmann is generally regarded as the father of art ...
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This chapter focuses on Johann Joachim Winckelmann, a student of Baumgarten who later became one of the most celebrated writers of his day. Winckelmann is generally regarded as the father of art history. Winckelmann's influence on his age was by all accounts enormous, and he became almost a cult figure in his own lifetime. With the possible exception of Klopstock, no German writer was held in such high regard. Winckelmann was admired by every major thinker of his generation — Lessing, Abbt, Nicolai, Mendelssohn, and Herder — and he was virtually canonized in the Goethezeit. In the early 1800s Goethe made him the patron saint of his own paganism and neo-classicism, invoking his memory to taunt the emerging Romantic movement. But the romantics too sanctified him. Even after his rebellion against neo-classicism, Friedrich Schlegel still revered ‘der heilige Winckelmann’.Less
This chapter focuses on Johann Joachim Winckelmann, a student of Baumgarten who later became one of the most celebrated writers of his day. Winckelmann is generally regarded as the father of art history. Winckelmann's influence on his age was by all accounts enormous, and he became almost a cult figure in his own lifetime. With the possible exception of Klopstock, no German writer was held in such high regard. Winckelmann was admired by every major thinker of his generation — Lessing, Abbt, Nicolai, Mendelssohn, and Herder — and he was virtually canonized in the Goethezeit. In the early 1800s Goethe made him the patron saint of his own paganism and neo-classicism, invoking his memory to taunt the emerging Romantic movement. But the romantics too sanctified him. Even after his rebellion against neo-classicism, Friedrich Schlegel still revered ‘der heilige Winckelmann’.
Giovanna Ceserani
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199744275
- eISBN:
- 9780199932139
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199744275.003.0002
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, American History: pre-Columbian BCE to 500CE
This chapter complicates the received notion of the Magna Graecia's modern discovery during the 'Hellenic turn’ of eighteenth-century Europe. The historical geography of Leandro Alberti and others ...
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This chapter complicates the received notion of the Magna Graecia's modern discovery during the 'Hellenic turn’ of eighteenth-century Europe. The historical geography of Leandro Alberti and others shows earlier Renaissance antiquarianism's perceptions of Greek South Italy as a place of picturesque natural beauty and lost antiquity, seemingly irreconcilable with the wider Italian classical past. The eighteenth-century rediscovery of Paestum is examined within its Neapolitan intellectual context, which includes the figures of Giambattista Vico, Alessio Simmaco Mazzocchi and even J.J. Winckelmann, and in relation to the emergence of vase studies analysis that reveals the differential investment of Italian and foreign scholars in Magna Graecia, with latter bent on a search for an ideal conception of classical Greece that would effectively relegate Magna Graecia to the margins of classical study.Less
This chapter complicates the received notion of the Magna Graecia's modern discovery during the 'Hellenic turn’ of eighteenth-century Europe. The historical geography of Leandro Alberti and others shows earlier Renaissance antiquarianism's perceptions of Greek South Italy as a place of picturesque natural beauty and lost antiquity, seemingly irreconcilable with the wider Italian classical past. The eighteenth-century rediscovery of Paestum is examined within its Neapolitan intellectual context, which includes the figures of Giambattista Vico, Alessio Simmaco Mazzocchi and even J.J. Winckelmann, and in relation to the emergence of vase studies analysis that reveals the differential investment of Italian and foreign scholars in Magna Graecia, with latter bent on a search for an ideal conception of classical Greece that would effectively relegate Magna Graecia to the margins of classical study.
Jeffrey Morrison
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198159124
- eISBN:
- 9780191673504
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198159124.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
There had been a historical focus upon Rome as a political and religious centre for Western culture. Corresponding attention was paid to its aesthetic appeal; the architecture of the city and its ...
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There had been a historical focus upon Rome as a political and religious centre for Western culture. Corresponding attention was paid to its aesthetic appeal; the architecture of the city and its store of art treasures offered the most striking testimony to the city's enduring power and influence. The sudden resurgence of interest and attitude towards Rome may have begun to take place during the period of Johann Joachim Winckelmann's residence in Rome, although it could not wholly be attributed to him. This book is concerned with instances of aesthetic education which took place in Rome. It identifies the reasons for the intense focus of interest on Rome in the 18th century and investigates the specific motivation of members of the Winckelmann circle in visiting Rome.Less
There had been a historical focus upon Rome as a political and religious centre for Western culture. Corresponding attention was paid to its aesthetic appeal; the architecture of the city and its store of art treasures offered the most striking testimony to the city's enduring power and influence. The sudden resurgence of interest and attitude towards Rome may have begun to take place during the period of Johann Joachim Winckelmann's residence in Rome, although it could not wholly be attributed to him. This book is concerned with instances of aesthetic education which took place in Rome. It identifies the reasons for the intense focus of interest on Rome in the 18th century and investigates the specific motivation of members of the Winckelmann circle in visiting Rome.
Jeffrey Morrison
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198159124
- eISBN:
- 9780191673504
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198159124.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
The consistent popularity of Johann Joachim Winckelmann in Rome was a significant attractor for many visitors. This chapter explains how and why Winckelmann acted as focal point for Italian ...
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The consistent popularity of Johann Joachim Winckelmann in Rome was a significant attractor for many visitors. This chapter explains how and why Winckelmann acted as focal point for Italian travellers interested in art. It attempts to determine the key components of Winckelmann's responses to art and how those responses explain why he was able to capture attention and attract patronage during his time in Rome. It also compares and contrasts Winckelman's and Roman Ingarden's interest of aesthetic education and art reception. It then attempts to differentiate Winckelmann's expression of aesthetic experience from that of his pupils.Less
The consistent popularity of Johann Joachim Winckelmann in Rome was a significant attractor for many visitors. This chapter explains how and why Winckelmann acted as focal point for Italian travellers interested in art. It attempts to determine the key components of Winckelmann's responses to art and how those responses explain why he was able to capture attention and attract patronage during his time in Rome. It also compares and contrasts Winckelman's and Roman Ingarden's interest of aesthetic education and art reception. It then attempts to differentiate Winckelmann's expression of aesthetic experience from that of his pupils.
Jeffrey Morrison
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198159124
- eISBN:
- 9780191673504
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198159124.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This chapter examines the qualifications of Johann Hermann von Reidesel as a pupil for Winckelmann and the type of training he underwent. It attempts to determine whether Riedesel's published work ...
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This chapter examines the qualifications of Johann Hermann von Reidesel as a pupil for Winckelmann and the type of training he underwent. It attempts to determine whether Riedesel's published work and other statements on art indicate the complete realization of Winckelmann's plans for an aesthetic education. It also examines the five main sources of information on Riedesel's approach to art: Briefe, Sendschreiben eines Liebhabers, Sizilien, Levante, and the Scottish letters.Less
This chapter examines the qualifications of Johann Hermann von Reidesel as a pupil for Winckelmann and the type of training he underwent. It attempts to determine whether Riedesel's published work and other statements on art indicate the complete realization of Winckelmann's plans for an aesthetic education. It also examines the five main sources of information on Riedesel's approach to art: Briefe, Sendschreiben eines Liebhabers, Sizilien, Levante, and the Scottish letters.
Jeffrey Morrison
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198159124
- eISBN:
- 9780191673504
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198159124.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
Johann Jacob Volkmann's position in literary history is broadly similar to that of Johann Hermann von Riedesel. Volkmann's work, Historich-kritische Nachrichten von Italien, marks one of the many ...
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Johann Jacob Volkmann's position in literary history is broadly similar to that of Johann Hermann von Riedesel. Volkmann's work, Historich-kritische Nachrichten von Italien, marks one of the many personal connections between Winckelmann and Goethe and paves the way for a limited degree of ideological continuity between the two men. This chapter addresses the question whether, and if so to what extent, Volkmann's Nachricten could have transmitted Winckelmann's thinking to another generation of readers and in particular, whether it reproduces anything more than his art history.Less
Johann Jacob Volkmann's position in literary history is broadly similar to that of Johann Hermann von Riedesel. Volkmann's work, Historich-kritische Nachrichten von Italien, marks one of the many personal connections between Winckelmann and Goethe and paves the way for a limited degree of ideological continuity between the two men. This chapter addresses the question whether, and if so to what extent, Volkmann's Nachricten could have transmitted Winckelmann's thinking to another generation of readers and in particular, whether it reproduces anything more than his art history.
Jeffrey Morrison
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198159124
- eISBN:
- 9780191673504
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198159124.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
While many accepted Winckelmann's theories of art production and many of his characteristic critical epithets, Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe remained obsessed with visual arts, which is central to ...
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While many accepted Winckelmann's theories of art production and many of his characteristic critical epithets, Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe remained obsessed with visual arts, which is central to Winckelmann's aesthetic. This chapter focuses on the essential contribution of Goethe to the business of aesthetic reception. It examines Goethe's scholarly approach and responses to art and compares his reception to art with that observed in Winckelmann.Less
While many accepted Winckelmann's theories of art production and many of his characteristic critical epithets, Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe remained obsessed with visual arts, which is central to Winckelmann's aesthetic. This chapter focuses on the essential contribution of Goethe to the business of aesthetic reception. It examines Goethe's scholarly approach and responses to art and compares his reception to art with that observed in Winckelmann.
J. B. BULLEN
- Published in print:
- 1994
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198128885
- eISBN:
- 9780191671722
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198128885.003.0013
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Walter Pater’s Studies in the History of the Renaissance was published in 1873, but by 1869 he had evolved a highly personal myth of the Renaissance which informed all his subsequent work. Each of ...
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Walter Pater’s Studies in the History of the Renaissance was published in 1873, but by 1869 he had evolved a highly personal myth of the Renaissance which informed all his subsequent work. Each of the essays which he wrote up to and including his essay on Leonardo da Vinci (1869) mark the evolution of the myth, and those which came afterwards, with the exception of the rather later ‘school of Giorgione’, are based upon premises about the nature of the Renaissance which Pater formulated in the 1860s. Pater is always quietly present in his writing, persistently colluding with his reader in such a way that his history possesses a curious sense of the contemporaneous. Pater is always aware of how, in historiography, subject and object are collapsed in the process of writing. The titles of the chapters that make up Studies in the History of the Renaissance suggest that it is predominantly a biographical history. In Pater’s essay on Johann Winckelmann, the Renaissance has lost almost entirely its historical connotations.Less
Walter Pater’s Studies in the History of the Renaissance was published in 1873, but by 1869 he had evolved a highly personal myth of the Renaissance which informed all his subsequent work. Each of the essays which he wrote up to and including his essay on Leonardo da Vinci (1869) mark the evolution of the myth, and those which came afterwards, with the exception of the rather later ‘school of Giorgione’, are based upon premises about the nature of the Renaissance which Pater formulated in the 1860s. Pater is always quietly present in his writing, persistently colluding with his reader in such a way that his history possesses a curious sense of the contemporaneous. Pater is always aware of how, in historiography, subject and object are collapsed in the process of writing. The titles of the chapters that make up Studies in the History of the Renaissance suggest that it is predominantly a biographical history. In Pater’s essay on Johann Winckelmann, the Renaissance has lost almost entirely its historical connotations.
J. B. BULLEN
- Published in print:
- 1994
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198128885
- eISBN:
- 9780191671722
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198128885.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
The expansiveness of Voltaire and the scholarship of Edward Gibbon came together in an art-historical context in the work of a writer far less well known than either of them: Jean-Baptiste Seroux ...
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The expansiveness of Voltaire and the scholarship of Edward Gibbon came together in an art-historical context in the work of a writer far less well known than either of them: Jean-Baptiste Seroux d’Agincourt. Although d’Agincourt is also less well known than his illustrious predecessor Johann Winckelmann, it was in the scheme which d’Agincourt adopted for a comprehensive history of Western art that the Renaissance makes its first tentative appearance. Seroux d’Agincourt’s debt to French Enlightenment historiography and to the work of Gibbon was extensive, but his primary source of inspiration was the work of Winckelmann. Winckelmann constructed a synthetic account of ancient art from its origins to its decline through a series of four periods — an archaic period, an early classical period, a late classical period, and a period of imitation and decline. Seroux d’Agincourt realized that Winckelmann’s method might be extended into more recent periods of art history.Less
The expansiveness of Voltaire and the scholarship of Edward Gibbon came together in an art-historical context in the work of a writer far less well known than either of them: Jean-Baptiste Seroux d’Agincourt. Although d’Agincourt is also less well known than his illustrious predecessor Johann Winckelmann, it was in the scheme which d’Agincourt adopted for a comprehensive history of Western art that the Renaissance makes its first tentative appearance. Seroux d’Agincourt’s debt to French Enlightenment historiography and to the work of Gibbon was extensive, but his primary source of inspiration was the work of Winckelmann. Winckelmann constructed a synthetic account of ancient art from its origins to its decline through a series of four periods — an archaic period, an early classical period, a late classical period, and a period of imitation and decline. Seroux d’Agincourt realized that Winckelmann’s method might be extended into more recent periods of art history.
Tamara Levitz
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199730162
- eISBN:
- 9780199932467
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199730162.003.0000
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
This chapter provides background on the collaborators involved in Perséphone by recreating from archival sources their meeting at Ida Rubinstein’s house on 20 October 1933, about six months before ...
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This chapter provides background on the collaborators involved in Perséphone by recreating from archival sources their meeting at Ida Rubinstein’s house on 20 October 1933, about six months before the premiere. It provides a historical account of each collaborator’s negotiations with Rubinstein and involvement in the production, before then describing the theatrical context in which the performance took place. Both the collaborators themselves and danced productions in France in this period (after the death of Diaghilev and demise of his Ballets Russes) were plagued by melancholia. This backdrop serves as a point of departure for a theoretical discussion of the connections between neoclassicism, melancholia, Antigone, Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s eighteenth-century classicist aesthetics, and Walter Benjamin’s notion of Baroque allegory, which grounds the arguments presented in this book.Less
This chapter provides background on the collaborators involved in Perséphone by recreating from archival sources their meeting at Ida Rubinstein’s house on 20 October 1933, about six months before the premiere. It provides a historical account of each collaborator’s negotiations with Rubinstein and involvement in the production, before then describing the theatrical context in which the performance took place. Both the collaborators themselves and danced productions in France in this period (after the death of Diaghilev and demise of his Ballets Russes) were plagued by melancholia. This backdrop serves as a point of departure for a theoretical discussion of the connections between neoclassicism, melancholia, Antigone, Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s eighteenth-century classicist aesthetics, and Walter Benjamin’s notion of Baroque allegory, which grounds the arguments presented in this book.
Daniel Orrells
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199236442
- eISBN:
- 9780191728549
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199236442.003.0003
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Chapter two takes account for the significance of German historical thought in Oxford in the second half of the nineteenth century. Benjamin Jowett, Regius Professor of Greek, helped to re‐organise ...
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Chapter two takes account for the significance of German historical thought in Oxford in the second half of the nineteenth century. Benjamin Jowett, Regius Professor of Greek, helped to re‐organise the Classics curriculum at the University, by implanting and centralizing Plato's dialogues on the syllabus. His tutorials were designed to mimic Socratic elenchus. But the issue of Greek pederasty troubled this issue of Greek exemplarity over the making of the Victorian man, an issue Jowett pondered in his translations of Plato, as explored in this chapter. Walter Pater came to be one of the Professor's most famous pupils, re‐directing Jowett's interpretations for his own ends. The issue of ancient homoerotics, as this chapter continues to examine, offered Pater an alternative way into thinking about the relationship between ancient and modern histories, between ancient and modern masculinities.Less
Chapter two takes account for the significance of German historical thought in Oxford in the second half of the nineteenth century. Benjamin Jowett, Regius Professor of Greek, helped to re‐organise the Classics curriculum at the University, by implanting and centralizing Plato's dialogues on the syllabus. His tutorials were designed to mimic Socratic elenchus. But the issue of Greek pederasty troubled this issue of Greek exemplarity over the making of the Victorian man, an issue Jowett pondered in his translations of Plato, as explored in this chapter. Walter Pater came to be one of the Professor's most famous pupils, re‐directing Jowett's interpretations for his own ends. The issue of ancient homoerotics, as this chapter continues to examine, offered Pater an alternative way into thinking about the relationship between ancient and modern histories, between ancient and modern masculinities.
Will D. Desmond
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- August 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198839064
- eISBN:
- 9780191874925
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198839064.003.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Ancient Greek, Roman, and Early Christian Philosophy, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Hegel is one of the most influential thinkers of modernity. Less recognized, but equally significant is his life-long engagement with ancient Greek and Roman civilizations. As a student of the ...
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Hegel is one of the most influential thinkers of modernity. Less recognized, but equally significant is his life-long engagement with ancient Greek and Roman civilizations. As a student of the Stuttgart Gymnasium, sometime headmaster of the Nürnberg Gymnasium, contemporary of philhellenes like Goethe and Hölderlin as well as seminal classical scholars like August Wolf and Niebuhr, Hegel developed his encyclopedic system at a time when classical scholarship was being institutionalized as Altertumswissenschaft, and when Hellenic studies in particular were experiencing a ‘renaissance’, especially in Germany. This chapter surveys Hegel’s life, education, publications, and persistent ideas, placing these in their immediate context in the revolutionary era after 1776. Hegel’s persistent and many-faceted return to antiquity—to the Romans as well as the Greeks—is clear in his Berlin lecture series on politics, art, religion, philosophy, and history. These themes form the core of Hegel’s philosophy of ‘spirit’, and are here outlined as the focus of subsequent chapters.Less
Hegel is one of the most influential thinkers of modernity. Less recognized, but equally significant is his life-long engagement with ancient Greek and Roman civilizations. As a student of the Stuttgart Gymnasium, sometime headmaster of the Nürnberg Gymnasium, contemporary of philhellenes like Goethe and Hölderlin as well as seminal classical scholars like August Wolf and Niebuhr, Hegel developed his encyclopedic system at a time when classical scholarship was being institutionalized as Altertumswissenschaft, and when Hellenic studies in particular were experiencing a ‘renaissance’, especially in Germany. This chapter surveys Hegel’s life, education, publications, and persistent ideas, placing these in their immediate context in the revolutionary era after 1776. Hegel’s persistent and many-faceted return to antiquity—to the Romans as well as the Greeks—is clear in his Berlin lecture series on politics, art, religion, philosophy, and history. These themes form the core of Hegel’s philosophy of ‘spirit’, and are here outlined as the focus of subsequent chapters.
William Fitzgerald
- Published in print:
- 2022
- Published Online:
- March 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780192893963
- eISBN:
- 9780191915109
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780192893963.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, History of Art: pre-history, BCE to 500CE, ancient and classical, Byzantine
This book is about the idealization of an antiquity that exhibits, in the words of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, ‘a noble simplicity and quiet grandeur’. It discusses the aesthetics of this strain of ...
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This book is about the idealization of an antiquity that exhibits, in the words of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, ‘a noble simplicity and quiet grandeur’. It discusses the aesthetics of this strain of neoclassicism as manifested in a range of work in different media and periods but focusing on the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. John Flaxman’s engravings on the Iliad and the sculpture of Antonio Canova and Bertel Thorvaldsen are analysed and illustrated, as are earlier and later manifestations of the same aesthetic in French Parnassian poetry, in Satie’s setting of Plato, and in the ancient collection of sympotic poetry known as the Anacreontea. Fitzgerald describes the potential challenge of a neoclassical aesthetics of simplicity and ‘whiteness’, and its tendencies to corruption. He characterizes the lingering presence of this version of antiquity as a ‘living death’.Less
This book is about the idealization of an antiquity that exhibits, in the words of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, ‘a noble simplicity and quiet grandeur’. It discusses the aesthetics of this strain of neoclassicism as manifested in a range of work in different media and periods but focusing on the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. John Flaxman’s engravings on the Iliad and the sculpture of Antonio Canova and Bertel Thorvaldsen are analysed and illustrated, as are earlier and later manifestations of the same aesthetic in French Parnassian poetry, in Satie’s setting of Plato, and in the ancient collection of sympotic poetry known as the Anacreontea. Fitzgerald describes the potential challenge of a neoclassical aesthetics of simplicity and ‘whiteness’, and its tendencies to corruption. He characterizes the lingering presence of this version of antiquity as a ‘living death’.
Benjamin Bennett
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823229161
- eISBN:
- 9780823241002
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823229161.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
With the mind serving as fertile ground for person-centric as well as others' ideas and insights, reading becomes a strong avenue for creating, shaping, and altering perspectives. Decoding the ...
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With the mind serving as fertile ground for person-centric as well as others' ideas and insights, reading becomes a strong avenue for creating, shaping, and altering perspectives. Decoding the multifaceted dynamics of reading and measuring how it enriches or influences the lives of readers necessitate a contextual distinction between novel (i.e., book) reading and literary reading. This chapter elucidates the relevance and influence of poems, ancient mythology, and modern reading in evaluating the impact of reading and that of actual text on readers' understanding. It details the ideologies purported by Johann Joachim Winckelmann and Friedrich Schlegel. Moreover, the chapter discusses the nature and repercussions of esoteric interests rooted in literature against those of contemporary communicative reading strategies with which the readership may more liberally associate.Less
With the mind serving as fertile ground for person-centric as well as others' ideas and insights, reading becomes a strong avenue for creating, shaping, and altering perspectives. Decoding the multifaceted dynamics of reading and measuring how it enriches or influences the lives of readers necessitate a contextual distinction between novel (i.e., book) reading and literary reading. This chapter elucidates the relevance and influence of poems, ancient mythology, and modern reading in evaluating the impact of reading and that of actual text on readers' understanding. It details the ideologies purported by Johann Joachim Winckelmann and Friedrich Schlegel. Moreover, the chapter discusses the nature and repercussions of esoteric interests rooted in literature against those of contemporary communicative reading strategies with which the readership may more liberally associate.
Katherine Harloe
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199695843
- eISBN:
- 9780191755880
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199695843.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Archaeology: Classical, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This book contributes to understandings of the history of classical scholarship in eighteenth-century Germany by exploring debates that arose over the work of the classicist and art historian Johann ...
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This book contributes to understandings of the history of classical scholarship in eighteenth-century Germany by exploring debates that arose over the work of the classicist and art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann between the publication of his Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (History of the Art of Antiquity) in 1764 and the end of the eighteenth century. Winckelmann’s eloquent articulation of the cultural and aesthetic value of studying the ancient Greeks, his adumbration of a new method (style analysis) for studying ancient artworks, and his provision of a model of cultural-historical development in terms of a succession of period styles, influenced both the public and intra-disciplinary self-image of classics long into the twentieth century. Yet this area of Winckelmann’s Nachleben has received relatively little attention compared with the proliferation of studies concerning his importance for late eighteenth-century German art and literature, for historians of sexuality, and his traditional status as a ‘founder figure’ within the academic disciplines of classical archaeology and the history of art. This book restores the figure of Winckelmann to classicists’ understanding of the history of their own discipline and uses debates between important figures such as Christian Gottlob Heyne, Friedrich August Wolf, and Johann Gottfried Herder to cast fresh light upon the emergence of the modern paradigm of classics as Altertumswissenschaft: the multi-disciplinary, comprehensive, and historicizing study of the ancient world.Less
This book contributes to understandings of the history of classical scholarship in eighteenth-century Germany by exploring debates that arose over the work of the classicist and art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann between the publication of his Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (History of the Art of Antiquity) in 1764 and the end of the eighteenth century. Winckelmann’s eloquent articulation of the cultural and aesthetic value of studying the ancient Greeks, his adumbration of a new method (style analysis) for studying ancient artworks, and his provision of a model of cultural-historical development in terms of a succession of period styles, influenced both the public and intra-disciplinary self-image of classics long into the twentieth century. Yet this area of Winckelmann’s Nachleben has received relatively little attention compared with the proliferation of studies concerning his importance for late eighteenth-century German art and literature, for historians of sexuality, and his traditional status as a ‘founder figure’ within the academic disciplines of classical archaeology and the history of art. This book restores the figure of Winckelmann to classicists’ understanding of the history of their own discipline and uses debates between important figures such as Christian Gottlob Heyne, Friedrich August Wolf, and Johann Gottfried Herder to cast fresh light upon the emergence of the modern paradigm of classics as Altertumswissenschaft: the multi-disciplinary, comprehensive, and historicizing study of the ancient world.
Hanneke Grootenboer
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- September 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780226717951
- eISBN:
- 9780226718002
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226718002.003.0003
- Subject:
- Art, Art Theory and Criticism
This chapter explores the genealogy of the pensive image in philosophical debate as well as in visual culture. It offers an in-depth discussion of the Denkbild or thought-image in the work of Johann ...
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This chapter explores the genealogy of the pensive image in philosophical debate as well as in visual culture. It offers an in-depth discussion of the Denkbild or thought-image in the work of Johann Gottfried Herder, Walter Benjamin, Jacques Rancière and Johann Joachim Winckelmann. The chapter demonstrates to what extent certain philosophical concepts have been based on concrete art works. The chapter defines the pensive image’s stillness as an unrest-at-rest and concludes that art is able to articulate particular ideas in visual terms that cannot be put into words.Less
This chapter explores the genealogy of the pensive image in philosophical debate as well as in visual culture. It offers an in-depth discussion of the Denkbild or thought-image in the work of Johann Gottfried Herder, Walter Benjamin, Jacques Rancière and Johann Joachim Winckelmann. The chapter demonstrates to what extent certain philosophical concepts have been based on concrete art works. The chapter defines the pensive image’s stillness as an unrest-at-rest and concludes that art is able to articulate particular ideas in visual terms that cannot be put into words.
Katherine Harloe
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199695843
- eISBN:
- 9780191755880
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199695843.003.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Archaeology: Classical, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
The first chapter seeks to redirects classicists’ attention to Winckelmann by examining the tradition of panegyric of him that played a central role in the self-representation of German classical ...
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The first chapter seeks to redirects classicists’ attention to Winckelmann by examining the tradition of panegyric of him that played a central role in the self-representation of German classical philology from the 1830s until the end of the Second World War. This tradition, the roots of which can be traced back to the 1790s, resulted in a picture of Winckelmann as a founding hero of the modern study of antiquity and as an inspirational figure whose remarkable life and character were held up as an example to future generations. It traces the vicissitudes of this picture, explores its role in helping to ground the disciplinary and scholarly community of Altertumswissenschaft, and considers how its persistence has obscured reflection upon how Winckelmann’s ideas and arguments contributed to the disciplinization of the classical scholarship in previous centuries.Less
The first chapter seeks to redirects classicists’ attention to Winckelmann by examining the tradition of panegyric of him that played a central role in the self-representation of German classical philology from the 1830s until the end of the Second World War. This tradition, the roots of which can be traced back to the 1790s, resulted in a picture of Winckelmann as a founding hero of the modern study of antiquity and as an inspirational figure whose remarkable life and character were held up as an example to future generations. It traces the vicissitudes of this picture, explores its role in helping to ground the disciplinary and scholarly community of Altertumswissenschaft, and considers how its persistence has obscured reflection upon how Winckelmann’s ideas and arguments contributed to the disciplinization of the classical scholarship in previous centuries.
Katherine Harloe
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199695843
- eISBN:
- 9780191755880
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199695843.003.0004
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Archaeology: Classical, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Chapter 4 develops an analysis of Winckelmann’s most famous work: the Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums. The first two sections consider its sources and structure, seeking to account for its ...
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Chapter 4 develops an analysis of Winckelmann’s most famous work: the Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums. The first two sections consider its sources and structure, seeking to account for its bipartite division and for Winckelmann’s claim to have provided a ‘system’ (Lehrgebäude). Intellectual antecedents (ancient sources, Vasari, Caylus, and Enlightenment philosophic historians such as Voltaire and Montesquieu) are discussed, and it is argued that the historical narrative of Greek art provided in Part 2 is intended to support the causal analysis of Part 1 by demonstrating its validity for a period from which relatively rich source material survives. The final section discusses selected responses to the Geschichte from the 1760s, in order to demonstrate that their reaction to the Geschichte was consistent with the connoisseurial expectations established by his earlier writings.Less
Chapter 4 develops an analysis of Winckelmann’s most famous work: the Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums. The first two sections consider its sources and structure, seeking to account for its bipartite division and for Winckelmann’s claim to have provided a ‘system’ (Lehrgebäude). Intellectual antecedents (ancient sources, Vasari, Caylus, and Enlightenment philosophic historians such as Voltaire and Montesquieu) are discussed, and it is argued that the historical narrative of Greek art provided in Part 2 is intended to support the causal analysis of Part 1 by demonstrating its validity for a period from which relatively rich source material survives. The final section discusses selected responses to the Geschichte from the 1760s, in order to demonstrate that their reaction to the Geschichte was consistent with the connoisseurial expectations established by his earlier writings.
Gideon Nisbet
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199662494
- eISBN:
- 9780191761355
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199662494.003.0002
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter locates the original impulse of Britain’s love-affair with Greek epigram at the start of the nineteenth century, in a collaborative miscellany which naturalized the genre within British ...
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This chapter locates the original impulse of Britain’s love-affair with Greek epigram at the start of the nineteenth century, in a collaborative miscellany which naturalized the genre within British literary tradition and laid the groundwork for a modern critical language of epigram-connoisseurship, founded on ancient practice. Its editors, Bland and Merivale, eulogized the Hellenistic poet and prototypical anthologist Meleager as a Romantic poet, establishing his predominance within the history of his genre by extending to epigram Johann Winckelmann's ideas of rise, peak, and decline.An important context is identified in a new kind of quarterly literary-political periodical which turned collective into cultural memory within a newly concretized public sphere. The Reviews are where Greek epigram got its first foothold in public print, and remained a hotbed of Anthology translation for much of the centuryLess
This chapter locates the original impulse of Britain’s love-affair with Greek epigram at the start of the nineteenth century, in a collaborative miscellany which naturalized the genre within British literary tradition and laid the groundwork for a modern critical language of epigram-connoisseurship, founded on ancient practice. Its editors, Bland and Merivale, eulogized the Hellenistic poet and prototypical anthologist Meleager as a Romantic poet, establishing his predominance within the history of his genre by extending to epigram Johann Winckelmann's ideas of rise, peak, and decline.An important context is identified in a new kind of quarterly literary-political periodical which turned collective into cultural memory within a newly concretized public sphere. The Reviews are where Greek epigram got its first foothold in public print, and remained a hotbed of Anthology translation for much of the century
