Rethinking Lessing's Laocoon

Antiquity, Enlightenment, and the 'Limits' of Painting and Poetry

Edited by Avi Lifschitz and Michael Squire

Classical Presences

Represents the first edited book in English to focus on Lessing's Laocoon, and includes work by leading international scholars whose work is mainly available only in German and French
Reassesses Lessing's seminal essay from a broad range of interdisciplinary perspectives, from classics and philosophy to comparative literature and history of art
Supplements detailed critical analysis with rich illustrations throughout

Rethinking Lessing's Laocoon

Antiquity, Enlightenment, and the 'Limits' of Painting and Poetry

Edited by Avi Lifschitz and Michael Squire

Description

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing first published Laokoon, oder uber die Grenzen der Mahlerey und Poesie (Laocoon, or on the Limits of Painting and Poetry) in 1766. Over the last 250 years, Lessing's essay has exerted an incalculable influence on western critical thinking. Not only has it directed the history of post-Enlightenment aesthetics, it has also shaped the very practices of 'poetry' and 'painting' in a myriad of different ways.

In this anthology of specially commissioned chapters - comprising the first ever edited book on the Laocoon in English - a range of leading critical voices has been brought together to reassess Lessing's essay on its 250th anniversary. Combining perspectives from multiple disciplines (including classics, intellectual history, philosophy, aesthetics, media studies, comparative literature, and art history), the book explores the Laocoon from a plethora of critical angles. Chapters discuss Lessing's interpretation of ancient art and poetry, the cultural backdrops of the eighteenth century, and the validity of the Laocoon's observations in the fields of aesthetics, semiotics, and philosophy. The volume shows how the Laocoon exploits Greek and Roman models to sketch the proper spatial and temporal 'limits' (Grenzen) of what Lessing called 'poetry' and 'painting'; at the same time it demonstrates how Lessing's essay is embedded within Enlightenment theories of art, perception, and historical interpretation, as well as within nascent eighteenth-century ideas about the 'scientific' study of Classical antiquity (Altertumswissenschaft). To engage critically with the Laocoon, and to make sense of its legacy over the last 250 years, consequently involves excavating various 'classical presences': by looking back to the Graeco-Roman past, the volume demonstrates, Lessing forged a whole new tradition of modern aesthetics.

Rethinking Lessing's Laocoon

Antiquity, Enlightenment, and the 'Limits' of Painting and Poetry

Edited by Avi Lifschitz and Michael Squire

Classical Presences

Frontmatter
List of Illustrations
List of Tables
Note on Laocoon Editions
0. Foreword: Why Lessing's Laocoon Still Matters, W. J. T. Mitchell
1. Introduction: Rethinking Lessings Laocoon From Across the Humanities, Avi Lifschitz and Michael Squire
2. Laocoon Today: On the Conceptual Infrastructure of Lessing's Treatise, David E. Wellbery
3. Laocoon among the Gods, or: On the Theological Limits of Lessing's Grenzen, Michael Squire
4. Lessing's Laocoon as Analytical Instrument: The Perspectives of a Classical Archaeologist, Luca Giuliani
5. Sympathy, Tragedy, and the Morality of Sentiment in Lessing's Laocoon, Katherine Harloe
6. Mendelssohn's Critique of Lessing's Laocoon, Frederick Beiser
7. Naturalizing the Arbitrary: Lessing's Laocoon and Enlightenment Semiotics, Avi Lifschitz
8. Temporalizationa Lessing's Laocoon and the Problem of Narration in Eighteenth-Century Historiography
9. Criticism as Poetrya Lessing's Laocoon and the Limits of Critique
10. Suffering in Art: Laocoon between Lessing and Goethe, Ritchie Robertson
11. Transparency and Imaginative Engagement: Material as Medium in Lessing's Laocoon, Jason Gaiger
12. Lessing's Laocoon and the 'As-If' of Aesthetic Experience, Jonas Grethlein
13. Art and Necessity: Rethinking Lessing's Critical Practice, Paul A. Kottman
14. Image and Text in Lessing's Laocoon: From Friendly Semiotic Neighbours to Articulatory Twins, Jurgen Trabant
15. Envoi: The Two-Fold Liminality of Lessing's Laocoon, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht
Endmatter
Notes on Contributors
Bibliography
Index

Rethinking Lessing's Laocoon

Antiquity, Enlightenment, and the 'Limits' of Painting and Poetry

Edited by Avi Lifschitz and Michael Squire

Classical Presences

Author Information

Avi Lifschitz, Associate Professor of European History and Fellow of Magdalen College at the University of Oxford.

Avi Lifschitz is Associate Professor of European History and Fellow of Magdalen College at the University of Oxford. Among his publications are Language and Enlightenment: The Berlin Debates of the Eighteenth Century (OUP, 2012) and the edited volumes Engaging with Rousseau (CUP, 2016) and Epicurus in the Enlightenment (co-edited with Neven Leddy; Voltaire Foundation, 2009). He has held research fellowships at the Clark Library at UCLA, the universities of Göttingen and Halle, and the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.

Contributors:

Frederick Beiser, Professor of Philosophy at Syracuse University

Elisabeth Décultot, Humboldt Professor at the Martin-Luther Universität of Halle-Wittenberg

Daniel Fulda, Professor of German Literature and Director of the Interdisciplinary Centre for European Enlightenment Studies at the Martin-Luther Universität of Halle-Wittenberg

Jason Gaiger, Associate Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory at the Ruskin School of Art, Oxford, and a Fellow of St Edmund Hall at the University of Oxford

Luca Giuliani, Professor and Rector of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin

Jonas Grethlein, Professor in Greek Literature at Heidelberg University

Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Albert Guérard Professor in Literature at Stanford University

Katherine Harloe, Associate Professor in Classics and Intellectual History at the University of Reading

Paul A. Kottman, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at the New School for Social Research in New York

Avi Lifschitz, Senior Lecturer in European Intellectual History at University College London

W. J. T. Mitchell, Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor of English, Art History, and Cinema at the University of Chicago

Ritchie Robertson, Taylor Professor of German Language and Literature at the University of Oxford

Michael Squire, Reader in Classical Art at King's College London

Jürgen Trabant, Professor Emeritus of Romance Linguistics at the Freie Universität Berlin

David E. Wellbery, LeRoy T. and Margaret Deffenbaugh Carlson University Professor at the University of Chicago