Enchantment: On Charisma and the Sublime in the Arts of the West by C. Stephen Jaeger (review)

Readers who have had the chance to follow C. Stephen Jaeger’s research and publications over the years could notice a progressive line taking him from the Origins of Courtliness (1985) to a study of the rise of cathedral schools in his The Envy of Angels (1994), then to an exploration of the spiritual dimension of courtly love (Ennobling Love, [1999]), and now, after having edited the intriguing volume on Magnificence and the Sublime in Medieval Aesthetics (2010), culminating, in a way, in his Enchantment (2012). Surprisingly, Jaeger here takes a pretty radical turn away from medieval studies and mostly focuses on the global issue of charisma, as it found its most dazzling expression in western art from antiquity to the present. Jaeger does not ignore the world of the Middle Ages, but his topic takes him all over the map, from the Homeric epic to Maxim Gorky, with a strong emphasis in-between on Albrecht Dürer’s self-portraits and Goethe’s Faust I and II. The chapters on Rainer Maria Rilke and the twentieth-century American cinema also appeal through their trenchant analysis of the charismatic element. Woody Allen fans will equally be delighted that Jaeger has discovered charisma in his cinematographic works, but all this cannot really concern us here, as significant the critical discussion of enchantment, aura, and charisma proves to be in a universal context, often, if not always, bordering on faith and religion. As Jaeger defines the charismatic person at the very end, ‘He or she gathers the force of suggested qualities and gathers bundled promises, promises of great things, beyond any hope of attaining or experiencing on our own: this individual is our conduit, our channeler, and our music . . . ’ (373–74). While children resort to fairy tales to internalize myth for the purpose of their own growth, adults seek redemption to gain a sense of meaning of life, which Jaeger clearly demarcates from the usual ‘happy end.’ Offering a kind of psychological reading, he concludes by arguing that movie-goers, for instance, look for more than just entertainment, instead for a charismatic enlightenment (my wording). Certainly, this might apply to a small percentage of people, but certainly not to the masses. But we had better leave this debate to sociologists or religious scholars, whereas our interest rests on how much charisma comes through in medieval romances, a tiny section in this heavy tome.

Jaeger suggests that the true secret of Arthurian and Grail literature rests in the presence of charisma which the individual can acquire through the quest either for love or God. But then he discovers a heavy dose of satire in works such as Chrétien’s Yvain (or Hartmann von Aue’s Iwein) directed at the idea of knighthood itself, which could actually threaten the element of charisma altogether. Next Jaeger alludes to the highly didactic element in romance, but that is not charisma either because no teacher there ever stands out because of his/her aura. Only the experience of love, as most poignantly formulated in Gottfried von Straßburg’s Tristan, could be identified as a moment conveying charisma. However, Gottfried only projects ideals and quickly undermines his two protagonists, as charismatic as they might be, because their need for honor clashes with the constraints of courtly life where marital principles dash their hopes of living out their deep feelings for each other. Neither Andreas Capellanus’ comments in his De arte amori nor the lais by Marie de France, to which Jaeger summarily refers, help us understand more clearly what the charismatic element might be, unless we identify it with the experience of courtly love by itself (such as in Eliduc, here not discussed). Perhaps we could identify the abstract society of those people with a noble heart (Gottfried) or of those who populate the Grail kingdom as a charismatic ideal, whereas a...