Description
Book SynopsisThe 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.
Trade Review"The Perils of Uglytown is a distillation of Harry Berger, Jr.'s intensive study of the Republic and other Platonic dialogues over several decades and makes an important contribution to understanding these texts and to the literary interpretation of the dialogues generally. Its highly original, provocative, and stimulating close reading of well-chosen passages is grounded in Berger's understanding of the textuality of the Platonic dialogues." -- -Seth L. Schein University of California, Davis "Somewhere in his innermost closet Harry Berger, Jr., must harbor the secret of perennial freshness. For decades now his vitally important work has conferred the power to see with new eyes familiar works of literature, philosophy, and art, as if their innermost meanings were being glimpsed for the first time." -- -Dr. Stephen Greenblatt Harvard University
Table of Contents1. 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. "Fenced 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
