Monstrous Bodies in German Culture

•  German culture of the 1770s, Johann Caspar Lavater’s pathognomical and physiognomical studies on physical ‘diversity’: - Physiognomik (‘Physiognomy’, 1772) - Physiognomische Fragmente zur Beförderung der Menschenkenntnis und Menschenliebe (‘Physiognomic Fragments for the Purpose of Promoting the Knowledge and Love of Mankind’, 1775-1778)

•  This  pseudo-­‐science  influenced  literary  descrip4ons  of  monstrous  bodies  in  the  last  decades  of  the  18th  Century  worldwide.  

•  Lavater’s  goal  was  to  trace  and  describe  the  physiognomy  of  the  genius  and  of  the  criminal  as  well  as  the  physiognomy  of  Jesus.    

Cesare  Lombroso  and  the  birth  of  criminology    -­‐  L'uomo di genio in rapporto alla psichiatria, 1888 (Man of Genius, London, 1891) - Le crime: Causes et remédes, 1899 (Crime, its Causes and Remedies, Boston, 1911)

-  Physiognomic and Phrenology

In  La  Fisonomia  dell'Huomo  (1688),  GiambaGsta  della  Porta  defines  physiognomy  (fisonomia)  as  a  science  that  inves4gates  natural  tendencies  or  traits  of  human  nature  based  on  fixed  features  of  the  body.  In  his  books  he  used  woodcuts  of  animals  to  illustrate  human  characteris4cs  and  argued  that  it  is  a  person's  temperament  and  not  the  stars  that  influences  facial  features,  general  appearance,  and  character.  

•  When  Lavater  published  his  works  the  Enlightenment  began  to  be  obscured  in  Germany  by  the  rising  irra4onality  of  Sturm  und  Drang    

•  By  the  end  of  the  18th  Century  the  Enlightenment  eventually  turned  into  the  poe4cs  of  the  “marvelous”  developed  by  the  Frühroman7k  (First  Roman5cism,  1796-­‐1800)  in  Jena,  of  the  “fantas5c  marvelous”  in  the  Roman5c  circle  of  Heidelberg  (1800-­‐1820)  and,  finally,  of  the  “fantas5c  uncanny”  during  the  late  Roman5cism  of  Berlin  (1820-­‐1840).    

•  Tzvetan  Todorov’s    analysis  of  the  “fantas4c”  in  literature.  

•  Georg  Christoph  Lichtenberg  –  an  adversary  of  Lavater’s  “physiognomical  frenzy”  –  and  Johann  Wolfgang  von  Goethe  were  fundamental  during  the  late  Enlightenment  for  the  sedimenta4on  of  a  scien4fic  and  epistemological  method  that  influenced  the  percep4on  of  the  monstrous  in  both  roman4c  literature  and  aesthe4cs.    

•  When  the  first  book  of  the  Lavater’s  Fragments  appeared,  Lichtenberg  spoke  of  a  “physiognomical  frenzy  […]  which  lasted  un4l  well  into  the  following  century”  

•   “The  more  experience  and  experiments  are  accumulated  during  the  explora4on  of  nature,  the  more  faltering  its  theories  become.  It  is  always  good  though  not  to  abandon  them  instantly.  For  every  hypothesis  which  used  to  be  good  at  least  serves  the  purpose  of  duly  summarizing  and  keeping  all  phenomena  un4l  its  own  4me.  One  should  lay  down  the  conflic4ng  experience  separately,  un4l  it  has  accumulated  sufficiently  to  jus4fy  the  efforts  necessary  to  edifice  a  new  theory”.        Georg  Christoph  Lichtenberg,  Aphorism  1602    (1790/91),  in  Sudelbücher  II  (‘Scrapbooks  II’),  in    SchriBen  und  Briefe,  hrsg.  von  Wolfgang  Promies    (München:  Carl  Hanser  Verlag,  1971),  Bd.  II,  Heg  J,  pp.    294-­‐295