Perils of Uglytown

Harry Berger, Jr., was Professor Emeritus of Literature and Art History at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His most recent books are Resisting Allegory: Interpretive Delirium in Spenser's 'Faerie Queene'; Harrying: Skills of Offense in Shakespeare's Henriad; and The Perils of Uglytown: Studies in Structural Misanthropology from Plato to Rembrandt.

• 1. A Polar Model of Culture Change: Introduction to Structural Misanthropology Part 1. Misanthropology in Plato's Dialogues 2. Critical Logography: Thucydides and Plato on the Politics of Communication 3 Katabasis and Narrative 4. Safemindedness: Lysis and Crito 5. Dying Angry: The Wrath of Socrates in Plato's Phaedo 6. More Than a Talking Head: Socrates and Cephalus in Republic 1 7. The Perils of Uglytown: Structural Misanthropology in the Republic 8. Adeimantus and Glaucon 9 Apprehension in the Timaeus: Plato's Nervous Narrator Part 2. Misanthropology in Early Modern Culture 10. Cybernetic Alienation: Prosthetic Strategies in Alberti, Leonardo, Castiglione, and Machiavelli 11. Collecting Body Parts in Leonardo's Cave: Vasari's Lives and the Erotics of Obscene Connoisseurship 12. "Fenced ears": The King's Body Impolitic in Gorboduc, King Lear, and Richard II 13. Prospero's Humiliation 14. Bad Boys and Hipsters: Shakespeare's Iago and Rembrandt's Rembrandt 15. The Drama of Competitive Posing: Portrait Plots in Hals and Rembrandt

"The Perils of Uglytown is a distillation of Harry Berger, Jr.'s intensive study of the Republic and other Platonic dialogues over several decades and makes an important contribution to understanding these texts and to the literary interpretation of the dialogues generally. Its highly original, provocative, and stimulating close reading of well-chosen passages is grounded in Berger's understanding of the textuality of the Platonic dialogues." -- -Seth L. Schein University of California, Davis "Somewhere in his innermost closet Harry Berger, Jr., must harbor the secret of perennial freshness. For decades now his vitally important work has conferred the power to see with new eyes familiar works of literature, philosophy, and art, as if their innermost meanings were being glimpsed for the first time." -- -Dr. Stephen Greenblatt Harvard University