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‘Tragic Failures’ and ‘Happy Mediocrity’: Biographies of Unsuccessful Men

Juliette Atkinson

in Victorian Biography Reconsidered: A Study of Nineteenth-Century 'Hidden' Lives

This chapter considers the biographies of men who had somehow failed. Like Ruskin, Browning, and Eliot, who each developed an ‘aesthetic of failure’, the biographers considered here cast failure in a ... More

This chapter considers the biographies of men who had somehow failed. Like Ruskin, Browning, and Eliot, who each developed an ‘aesthetic of failure’, the biographers considered here cast failure in a heroic or positive light. In The Life of John Sterling (1851), Carlyle used biography to protect his ‘noble’ subject from an unsympathetic public. Sterling's life taps into a broader Victorian fascination with the lives of charismatic men who had died young and whose personal influence gave them a role more often associated with female lives. Oliphant also depicts a life of heroic failure in her Life of Edward Irving (1862), where she also voices private grief. Lucas's biography of Bernard Barton (1893) treasures the subject's mediocrity as a sign of personal worth. These works reveal that despite its ostensibly publicizing function, biography was used as a criticism of, and shield from, a distasteful public sphereLess

Introduction

in Exemplarity and Mediocrity: The Art of the Average from Bourgeois Tragedy to Realism

This book examines German-language literature from 1750 to 1850, focusing on the tension between exemplarity and mediocrity that was played out primarily in the world of letters. In particular, it ... More

This book examines German-language literature from 1750 to 1850, focusing on the tension between exemplarity and mediocrity that was played out primarily in the world of letters. In particular, it considers the paradox of how something that by definition is “nothing out of the ordinary” can be ordinary and extraordinary at once, discussing this paradox along three interrelated aesthetic axes: the average audience, the average artist, and average life. The book offers an interpretation of the first great work of German literature, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werther (1774, The Sorrows of Young Werther), which manifests one of the tensions between exemplarity and mediocrity: the unequivocal demand for artistic genius coupled with a decided affection for everyday life. It also comments on a dilemma faced by Germany: to establish itself as a literary nation of European quality at a time when success began to be measured in sales. This particular German dilemma is tackled by Goethe and Friedrich Schiller in the collection of notes and charts on dilettantism.Less

Exemplarity and Mediocrity

in Exemplarity and Mediocrity: The Art of the Average from Bourgeois Tragedy to Realism

This chapter examines aesthetics' long-standing abhorrence of mediocre quality, in which average art, even if it still can be sublime, is worse than artistic failure in a lot of ways. It ... More

This chapter examines aesthetics' long-standing abhorrence of mediocre quality, in which average art, even if it still can be sublime, is worse than artistic failure in a lot of ways. It differentiates this universal rejection of mediocrity by looking at a key reversal in aesthetic thought that takes place with the break from normative aesthetics (Aristotle, Horace) in the eighteenth century and the emergence of a genial notion of art (Immanuel Kant). Normative aesthetics strictly circumscribes the procedures, genre distinctions, and subject matter of art, hence locating mediocrity partially in the inability to follow the existing standards and genre determinations. This criterion is reversed by modern art under the imperative of originality, with mediocre art turning into imitative, derivative production. In this context, modern exemplarity sets a new rule for aesthetic judgment via originality, rather than adhering to canonical texts and established procedure.Less

The Average Audience (Lessing on Bourgeois Tragedy)

in Exemplarity and Mediocrity: The Art of the Average from Bourgeois Tragedy to Realism

In The Birth of Tragedy (1872), Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche declares that when the “man of everyday life” assumes the tragic stage, it spells doom for tragedy—and with it great art. This chapter ... More

In The Birth of Tragedy (1872), Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche declares that when the “man of everyday life” assumes the tragic stage, it spells doom for tragedy—and with it great art. This chapter examines bourgeois tragedy by focusing on Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's Hamburg Dramaturgy (1767–1768). In particular, it considers the theoretical underpinnings of lending “dear mediocrity” a tragic nimbus as well as the aesthetic-ethical stakes of wanting to move an audience to feel compassion. The chapter discusses Lessing's theory as well as his correspondence with Friedrich Nicolai and Moses Mendelssohn. It also analyzes bourgeois tragedy's rejection of sublime, public heroes in favor of common, domestic protagonists and how it aesthetically enacts the end of the age of heroes while ushering in the age of the common man. Finally, the chapter explores how Lessing establishes theater as the educative arena for converting an average audience into an exemplary public and considers his view that it is the common hero, not the exceptional one, who instigates exemplarity.Less

The Average Artist (Goethe and Schiller on Dilettantism)

in Exemplarity and Mediocrity: The Art of the Average from Bourgeois Tragedy to Realism

This chapter examines the aesthetics of the genius by focusing on the literary and theoretical writings of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller. In these writings, both Goethe and ... More

This chapter examines the aesthetics of the genius by focusing on the literary and theoretical writings of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller. In these writings, both Goethe and Schiller continually reflect on questions of genius and mediocrity—particularly in Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther and Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship along with their fragmentary, collective project on the dilettante. However, they also acknowledge that the modern art system requires not only an aesthetics of genius but also an aesthetics of dilettantism. By locating the origin of dilettantism in the universal mixture of art and bourgeois existence, Goethe and Schiller recognize that modern art gives rise to social, economic, and psychological forces which impinge upon and influence art like never before. Whereas the genius is the figure of exception, an absolute rarity, dilettantes embody the world of the non-exceptional or average artist.Less

Conclusion

in Exemplarity and Mediocrity: The Art of the Average from Bourgeois Tragedy to Realism

The dilemma of exemplarity and mediocrity does not end in the nineteenth century, but assumes a different form in the twentieth century for a variety of reasons. One reason is that the distinction ... More

The dilemma of exemplarity and mediocrity does not end in the nineteenth century, but assumes a different form in the twentieth century for a variety of reasons. One reason is that the distinction between high and low culture slowly began to be questioned and blurred from within high art only after Heinrich Heine's celebration of the “end of the Goethean artistic period” (as the end of idealizing art). The relation between exemplarity and mediocrity was also influenced by the development of the humanities in the second half of the nineteenth century. Another reason is that Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel rightly declared that prosaic reality affects all aspects of modern life from economics to politics, from morality to society. Alexis de Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill addressed the dilemma of mediocrity in power in their respective books Democracy in America (1835/1840) and On Liberty (1859). In Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche recognizes that mediocrity in power necessarily turns into something beyond mediocre.Less

Jewish Leadership in the Generation of Expulsion

Marc Saperstein

in Leadership and Conflict: Tensions in Medieval and Early Modern Jewish History and Culture

This chapter explores and challenges the basis for modern criticism against Jewish leaders in the Middle Ages. It then reviews the work of one of the most important rabbinic figures in that perilous ... More

This chapter explores and challenges the basis for modern criticism against Jewish leaders in the Middle Ages. It then reviews the work of one of the most important rabbinic figures in that perilous time, Rabbi Isaac Aboab, focusing especially on the texts of his sermons. Aboab left Spain for Portugal in the summer of 1492 and died less than a year later. Aboab's stature as one of the most important talmudists of his generation is attested by many. There is clear evidence that Aboab took preaching seriously, reflecting on the techniques and conventions of the art, occasionally preaching twice on the same sabbath (at Shaharit and Minhah services), delivering wedding sermons and eulogies as well as the expected sermons for Shabat Hagadol and Shabat Shuvah (the sabbaths immediately preceding Passover and Yom Kippur, respectively).Less

Thomas Bernhard's Rant

John Limon

in Death's Following: Mediocrity, Dirtiness, Adulthood, Literature

This chapter focuses on the concept of mediocrity: the mediocrity, central figure of Thomas Bernhard's novels, is another term for Heidegger's “They.” The mediocrity is defined here as someone for ... More

This chapter focuses on the concept of mediocrity: the mediocrity, central figure of Thomas Bernhard's novels, is another term for Heidegger's “They.” The mediocrity is defined here as someone for whom genius is visible but unavailable; thus the mediocrity can understand the claim on immortality but feel its eternal impossibility in his own case. This makes mediocrity the privileged position for understanding death; mediocrity is practice for being forgotten. And the rant, the form of Bernhard's novels, is the genre of temporally orphaned mediocrity: in the face of the loss of family continuity in time, the ranter tries to assemble an audience in the forlorn hope of occupying appalled minds forever, as the genius occupies willing minds.Less

The Critique of Comic Reason

Daniel R. Smith

in Comedy and Critique: Stand-Up Comedy and the Professional Ethos of Laughter

This chapter brings together themes and arguments from the preceding chapters to outline a theory of stand-up comedians as proto-sociologists. It begins by outlining a potential ‘subterranean’ ... More

This chapter brings together themes and arguments from the preceding chapters to outline a theory of stand-up comedians as proto-sociologists. It begins by outlining a potential ‘subterranean’ history of the elective affinity between New Left, ‘Alt. Comedy’ and British sociology. From this the chapter explores the distinctive figuration of and mode of critique provided by the stand-up comedian as a proto-sociologist. This is then illustrated through a reading of four contemporary stand-up comedians and their potential contribution to sociological knowledge.Less

The Future of Faculty Unionization

Cary Nelson

in No University Is an Island: Saving Academic Freedom

This chapter discusses the history, development, and future of faculty unionization in the United States and explores the importance of collective bargaining for the faculty. Collective bargaining ... More

This chapter discusses the history, development, and future of faculty unionization in the United States and explores the importance of collective bargaining for the faculty. Collective bargaining can restore shared governance to a campus where it has declined or can establish it for the first time. A union can play a major role in strengthening faculty morale. When all parties bargain in good faith, collective bargaining is a method for conflict negotiation and resolution. It provides procedures and a time line for grievance resolution. It can also establish raises and benefits based on good-faith negotiation. In addition, the chapter describes how some members of the academe oppose unionism. Faculty at elite schools worry that unions would encourage mediocrity, rather than a meritocracy, and thus would undercut familiar practices such as merit pay.Less