Bitter Carnival (eBook)

Ressentiment and the Abject Hero

Michael Andre Bernstein (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF

1992
260 Seiten
Princeton University Press (Verlag)
978-1-4008-2063-4 (ISBN)

Infos

"e;You people put importance on your lives. Well, my life has never been important to anyone. I haven't got any guilt about anything,"e; bragged the mass-murderer Charles Manson. "e;These children that come at you with knives, they are your children. You taught them. I didn't teach them. . . . They are running in the streets--and they are coming right at you!"e; When a real murderer accuses the society he has brutalized, we are shocked, but we are thrilled by the same accusations when they are mouthed by a fictional rebel, outlaw, or monster. In Bitter Carnival, Michael Andr Bernstein explores this contradiction and defines a new figure: the Abject Hero. Standing at the junction of contestation and conformity, the Abject Hero occupies the logically impossible space created by the intersection of the satanic and the servile. Bernstein shows that we heroicize the Abject Hero because he represents a convention that has become a staple of our common mythology, as seductive in mass culture as it is in high art. Moving from an examination of classical Latin satire; through radically new analyses of Diderot, Dostoevsky, and Cline; and culminating in the courtroom testimony of Charles Manson, Bitter Carnival offers a revisionist rereading of the entire tradition of the "e;Saturnalian dialogue"e; between masters and slaves, monarchs and fools, philosophers and madmen, citizens and malcontents. It contests the supposedly regenerative power of the carnivalesque and challenges the pieties of utopian radicalism fashionable in contemporary academic thinking. The clarity of its argument and literary style compel us to confront a powerful dilemma that engages some of the most central issues in literary studies, ethics, cultural history, and critical theory today.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 17.3.1992
• Verlagsort: Princeton
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Essays / Feuilleton
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung
• Schlagworte: Abjection • adage • aesthetic theory • Allan Bloom • Anarchy • A Nasty Story • Anecdote • antipathy • Antithesis • Apemantus • aphorism • Aquarian Age • At the Core • author • awareness • Ben Jonson • bithynia • carnivalesque • Cataclysm (Dragonlance) • Catullus • Charles Manson • Citizenship • Consciousness • contempt • cowardice • Criticism • deaconess • Denis Diderot • De rerum natura • Dialogic • Dilemma • Disgust • Dissipation • Dramaturgy • Elias Canetti • Epistle • Essay • Etiquette • Existentialism • Family resemblance • Farce • Fascism • Feste • François Rabelais • Free Will • French moralists • Friedrich Nietzsche • Fundamental structure • Fyodor Dostoyevsky • fyodor karamazov • Gary Saul Morson • Generosity • Genre • Georges Bernanos • George Steiner • Gluttony • Harvard University Press • hatred • Helots • Horace • Household • human action • human behavior • humiliation • hypocrisy • Imagination • Inception • Intelligentsia • Invidia • Irony • Jacques Maritain • Jean Genet • Jean-Jacques Rousseau • Jeffrey Mehlman • Johann Georg Hamann • Joseph Conrad • jouissance • Julia Kristeva • Juvenal • KANTIANISM • Last Exit to Brooklyn • Laziness • Leveling (philosophy) • Life Against Death • Literature • loeb classical library • malcontent • malvolio • Marquis de Sade • meal • Messene • Mikhail Bakhtin • Minima Moralia • Moral blindness • mores • Moses and Monotheism • Multitude • Murena (comic book) • Music Industry • Narcissism • narrative • Nicomedia • Notes From Underground • Novel • obscenity • open letter • originality • Oxford University Press • Pamphlet • Parody • patricide • Persius • Philistinism • Philosophes • Philosophy • physical universe • Picaresque novel • plagiarism • Platitude • Plausible Denial • ploy • Poetry • Polemic • Polonius • Postmodernism • Powers of Horror • Prose • Rabelais and His World • Racism • Ralph Manheim • Rameau's Nephew • rant • R. D. Laing • Ressentiment • ridicule • Robert Brasillach • rock music • rough magic • Samuel Beckett • Sancho Panza • Satire • S. (Dorst novel) • self-love • Senegal • sentimentality • Suffering • Superiority (short story) • Tacitus • taunting • Teleology • television program • The Brothers Karamazov • The Idiot • Theodor W. Adorno • The Other Hand • The Philosopher • The Pursuit of the Millennium • Thomas Bernhard • Thought • Tragedy • Trait Theory • Twelfth Night • Tzvetan Todorov • Unreliable Narrator • Vertumnus • Violence and the Sacred • visual arts • Wallace Stevens • Western Europe • Writing
• ISBN-10: 1-4008-2063-4 / 1400820634
• ISBN-13: 978-1-4008-2063-4 / 9781400820634