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What is the force in art, C. Stephen Jaeger asks, that can enter our consciousness, inspire admiration or imitation, and carry a reader or viewer from the world as it is to a world more sublime? We have long recognized the power of individuals to lead or enchant by the force of personal charisma-and indeed, in his award-winning Envy of Angels, Jaeger himself brilliantly parsed the ability of charismatic teachers to shape the world of medieval learning. In Enchantment, he turns his attention to a sweeping and multifaceted exploration of the charisma not of individuals but of art.
For Jaeger, the charisma of the visual arts, literature, and film functions by creating an exalted semblance of life, a realm of beauty, sublime emotions, heroic motives and deeds, godlike bodies and actions, and superhuman abilities, so as to dazzle the humbled spectator and lift him or her up into the place so represented. Charismatic art makes us want to live in the higher world that it depicts, to behave like its heroes and heroines, and to think and act according to their values. It temporarily weakens individual will and rational critical thought. It brings us into a state of enchantment.
Ranging widely across periods and genres, Enchantment investigates the charismatic effect of an ancient statue of Apollo on the poet Rilke, of the painter Durer's self-portrayal as a figure of Christ-like magnificence, of a numinous Odysseus washed ashore on Phaeacia, and of the black-and-white projection of Fred Astaire dancing across the Depression-era movie screen. From the tattoos on the face of a Maori tribesman to the haunting visage of Charlotte Rampling in a film by Woody Allen, Jaeger's extraordinary book explores the dichotomies of reality and illusion, life and art that are fundamental to both cultic and aesthetic experience.
What is the force in art, C. Stephen Jaeger asks, that can enter our consciousness, inspire admiration or imitation, and carry a reader or viewer from the world as it is to a world more sublime? We have long recognized the power of individuals to lead or enchant by the force of personal charisma-and indeed, in his award-winning Envy of Angels, Jaeger himself brilliantly parsed the ability of charismatic teachers to shape the world of medieval learning. In Enchantment, he turns his attention to a sweeping and multifaceted exploration of the charisma not of individuals but of art.
For Jaeger, the charisma of the visual arts, literature, and film functions by creating an exalted semblance of life, a realm of beauty, sublime emotions, heroic motives and deeds, godlike bodies and actions, and superhuman abilities, so as to dazzle the humbled spectator and lift him or her up into the place so represented. Charismatic art makes us want to live in the higher world that it depicts, to behave like its heroes and heroines, and to think and act according to their values. It temporarily weakens individual will and rational critical thought. It brings us into a state of enchantment.
Ranging widely across periods and genres, Enchantment investigates the charismatic effect of an ancient statue of Apollo on the poet Rilke, of the painter Durer's self-portrayal as a figure of Christ-like magnificence, of a numinous Odysseus washed ashore on Phaeacia, and of the black-and-white projection of Fred Astaire dancing across the Depression-era movie screen. From the tattoos on the face of a Maori tribesman to the haunting visage of Charlotte Rampling in a film by Woody Allen, Jaeger's extraordinary book explores the dichotomies of reality and illusion, life and art that are fundamental to both cultic and aesthetic experience.
Introduction
Chapter 1. Charisma and Art
Chapter 2. Living Art and Its Surrogates: The Genesis of
Charismatic Art
Chapter 3. Odysseus Rising: The Homeric World
Chapter 4. Icon and Relic
Chapter 5. Charismatic Culture and Its Media: Gothic Sculpture and
Medieval Humanism
Chapter 6. Romance and Adventure
Chapter 7. Albrecht Dürer's Self-Portrait (1500): The Face and Its
Contents
Chapter 8. Book Burning at Don Quixote's
Chapter 9. Goethe's Faust and the Limits of the Imagination
Chapter 10. The Statue Changes Rilke's Life
Chapter 11. Grand Illusions: Classic American Cinema
Chapter 12. Lost Illusions: American Neorealism and Hitchcock's
Vertigo
Chapter 13. Woody Allen: Allan Felix's Glasses and Cecilia's
Smile
Conclusion
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments
This book examines charisma as the force in art, literature, and film that engages the reader's or viewer's consciousness and inspires admiration and imitation. Thirteen chapters analyze the workings of charisma and its effects, ranging from Homer to Woody Allen.
C. Stephen Jaeger is Gutsgell Professor Emeritus in the Departments of Germanic Languages and Literatures and Comparative Literature at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of The Envy of Angels: Cathedral Schools and Social Ideals in Medieval Europe, 950-1200, winner of the 1995 Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History, and Ennobling Love: In Search of a Lost Sensibility, both of which are available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.
"In a wide-ranging and stimulating study, C. Stephen Jaeger argues
that charisma is the sublime in human presence. . . . Jaeger makes
a good case for the enchantment of the reader or spectator, a
thread that enables him both to bring together very different
cultural artefacts and to conclude with a plea that enchantment
should be integral to education."
*Modern Language Review*
"Enchantment is, as usual with Jaeger's books, extremely rich in
terms of fascinating hypotheses and cues for discussion. The style
is always clear and eloquent, and the authors and the works
discussed cover a very wide span of time, from Homer to Federico
Fellini and Woody Allen."
*Philosophical Inquiries*
"C. Stephen Jaeger's magnificent, generous, and wide-ranging study
has at its heart all that which is life-affirming. At every turn we
encounter vigorous, eloquent, and intellectually consistent
challenges to the division of art and experience. Readers in and
between many disciplines will find this deeply perceptive account
of the magical workings of enchantment, charisma, and the sublime
in texts, images and bodies, empowering and uplifting. It cannot
fail to influence the next generation of thought about the arts and
media more generally."
*Paul Binski, University of Cambridge*
"Enchantment formulates a compelling theory of charismatic art as
an alternative to our Western preoccupation with mimesis and
hermeneutics. With the learning, passion, and verve familiar from
his distinguished medieval scholarship, Jaeger's argument ranges
magisterially from the body art of primitive cultures, through
Classical epic, medieval sculpture, pedagogy and romance (the high
point of charismatic culture in the West), all the way to Rilke and
American cinema."
*Jane K. Brown, University of Washington*
"An intelligent, thought-provoking, and compelling discussion of
the phenomenon of personal charisma and its transformative effects.
C. Stephen Jaeger takes the reader through a stunning series of
examples from literature, the visual arts, and film across a very
broad historical range, from classical antiquity to the present.
Throughout, he presents his claims in highly communicative and
inviting prose. A sheer pleasure to read."
*John T. Hamilton, Harvard University*
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