Laocoon's Body and the Aesthetics of Pain: Winckelmann, Lessing, Herder, Moritz, Goethe (review)

348 Book Revkws Her demonstration is overlooked by those who see her plays only as an extension of her husband's ÎμΰυÎμ3Ε ίοη3Ε program or compare them styUsticaUy to other Uterary models, as tie translators do to this anthology. Mrs. Gottsched has οÎμÎμη criticized as unseemly for writing the body and presenting it to vulgar images (vomit, excrement, prostitution to French Housekeeper ), but, surely, we can applaud her courage to calling a spade a spade and exposing the theatricaUty of the highly artificial culture which she identifies with French mannerisms. To this she οϕ Ï• οβÎμβ a German culture that does not deny its peasant tradition of Ufe to touch with nature and ΟίÎμ needs of die body. Wtereas "a Frenchwoman is not supposed to rummage around to tie dirty Unen of a merchant 's son" (151), a German woman is portrayed as an agent that chaUenges bourgeois aspirations to adopt die life styk of tie nobiUty, a chaUenge that begins "at ΙιοπιÎμ" and does not scom mention of undeiwear and "dirty Unen." To me, this is a good Îμχ3ΠΓϕ 1Îμ of how Luise Gottsched relates gender to other social catcgorks and how she depicts female resistance to, and redirection of, cultural norms and tendencies. If common βÎμηβÎμ is a vahe in tie bou^ois pubUc sphere, then it is women's contribution to see to it that this common βÎμηβÎμ rematas grounded to the senses instead of to abstract reason. Common βÎμηβÎμ is then no longer a "natural" prerogative of males. I read Luise Gottsched's plays as a plea for a female cultural agency tiiat is tadcpÎμndÎμnt of and ta contrast to her biographical struggles with male superiority, which I think has σÎμÎμη wrongly emphasized to tiiis English edition . To make these comedies more accessibk and show die author's agenda of tiematizing naturakess to GÎμrman boun^ois culture, the vocabulary, particularly to Pietism in Petticoats, would have to be changed from the stilted English given here to a language that reinforces the tiiematic context. The sprechende Namen would have to be better translated and the explanation of them to the footnotes corrected. "Herr Tiefenbom" does not mean "deep wÎμU" but refers to die lower class origin of this man: bom low. "Herr Muckersdorff" may or may not be from "the village of pious frauds" (5), but he clearly shows his Mucken, his quirks, which designate him as a social misfit and help create the dramatic tension. Hobart and William Smith Colleges Angelika Rauch Simon Richter, Laocoon's Body and the Aesthetics of Pain: Winckelmann, Lessing , Herder, Moritz, Goethe. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1992. Richter's revised dissertation on dassical aesthetics and its negotiations with pain is a work of exceptional erudition and bold imagination. Sometimes it becomes too boldly imaginative—some of the Îμtymological argumentation strikes me as fanciful, as docs Richter's framing of die GoÎμÃœlÎμ-Karl Phüipp Moritz relationship . HowÎμver, the occasional provocation, like the speed bump, helps to focus attention and αÎμÎμÏ• Îμη engagement and f suspect tiiat this is what Richter totended . More generaUy, Richter's insights and the "heterc^nous discourses" (190) he brings to bear on Wtockelmann's, Lcsstog's, Herder's, Moritz's and Goetiie 's classicisms open up the field of German classicistic aesthetics to a wealth of new ideas, new contexts and very exciting avemes of scholarly pursuit. Goethe Yearbook 349 Richter's starting point is the Laocoon group in the Vatican Museum and die large body of eightÎμÎμnth-century German aestlÂœtic commentary that marvels at its classical restraint, its "edle Einfalt und stüle Größe," but dÎμllies the obvious pata that Laocoon is expresstag. His first chapter, "Laocoon's Two Bodies," posits both a real (screaming) and an ideal (transcending, restraUed) Laocoon statue to account for die "jarring incongruity between the actual statue and the extravagant aesthetic and moral claims mat attach to it" (9)· Richter, a very clever and engaging narrator, provides a thorough history of the statue and tie story it depicts (three versions, disttoguished mainly by who dies—one son, both sons or aü αττÎμÎμ figures) and speculates as to die conditions under which German aestieticians , particularly Wtockcfmann, were able to view it. He then...