On Bathos Literature, Art, Music

While the sublime has garnered a great deal of critical attention over the past twenty years, its counterpart, bathos, has yet to receive any extended treatment. Generally understood as an inadvertent descent to the low, vulgar, and ludicrous in writing or art, the term "bathos" was popularised by Pope, who used it to satirise his contemporaries. Ironically likening bathos to the depths of profundity, Pope lauded his peers for their influential writings whilst openly deriding their absurd misuses of figure and rhetorical device. Pope's method proved prophetic: today, artists regularly celebrate and incorporate bathetic practice.

This essay collection considers how bathos has become so central to literature, fine art, and music. The innovative and diverse contributions assess the consequences of this endemic inversion of aesthetic standards, and consider where artistic production might go after hitting, and so comfortably inhabiting, rock bottom.

On Bathos: Introduction, Peter Nicoholls and Sara Crangle (New York University, USA and University of Sussex, UK) 2. What is Bathos?, Keston Sutherland (University of Sussex, UK) 3. Dada is Bathos! Or: of the the hobbyhorse endlessly rocking, Sara Crangle (University of Sussex, UK) 4. The Strings are False: Bathos, Pastoral, and Social Reflexivity in 1930s British Poetry, Tyrus Miller5. Jim the Jerk: Bathos and Loveliness in the Poetry of James Schuyler, John Wilkinson (University of Notre Dame, USA) 6. She Disappeared into Unhappy Consciousness: Louise Bourgeois and the Bathos of Surrealism, Doug Haynes (University of Sussex, UK) 7. Cultures of Musical Failures, Francesca Brittan (University of Cambridge, UK) 8. Bathos and Mind-reading, Bob Perelman (University of Pennsylvania, USA) 9. Low Resistance, Martin Crowley (University of Cambridge, UK) 10. Kallos anti-Bathos? (From Calle to Freud, Lacan, and back), Jean-Michel Rabaté (University of Pennsylvania, USA) Index