Peer Reviewed Journal Articles by Scott J. Juengel
In the wake of NASSR's 2018 conference theme-the Open-this essay attempts to think in open water ... more In the wake of NASSR's 2018 conference theme-the Open-this essay attempts to think in open water by examining two literary accounts of dread and disorientation at sea. In Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) and William Cowper's "The Castaway" (1799) we encounter the radical exposure of the subject to oceanic vastness with, as Crusoe laments, "no prospect … but perishing." Rather than read the episodes as instances of sublimity, I view them as meditations on the geometry of the event, their axes drawn in part by Immanuel Kant's philosophical writings on directionality, especially his "What is Orientation in Thinking?" (1786). As stories of forsaken sailors coordinate physical and metaphysical reduction, they also engage in an austere formal rigor-i.e., a body floating in space, a horizon line, a terminal verticality-that reminds us that form has always been orientation in thinking. Nature does not seem to care to have us as a witness. (Michelet, The Sea 22) Both progress and sinkings leave behind them the same peaceful surface. (Blumenberg, Shipwreck with Spectator 59)
Essay awarded the Monroe Kirk Spears Award by SEL for 2018.
In order to exemplify the terms that govern his interdiction against lying, Immanuel Kant has rec... more In order to exemplify the terms that govern his interdiction against lying, Immanuel Kant has recourse to a familiar scenario from the history of moral philosophy: the assassin at the gate. Can one lie in order to redirect a murderer who pursues one's guest? This essay considers how Kant's commitment to truth-telling supersedes his commitment to hospitable practices, and suggests how the peculiarly inhospitable worlds of the gothic novel might depend upon a similar ethical exigency.
Essay awarded the Keats-Shelley Association Essay Prize for 2013. Special Issue: "Romanticism an... more Essay awarded the Keats-Shelley Association Essay Prize for 2013. Special Issue: "Romanticism and Disaster," ed. by Jacques Khalip and David Collings
By Scott J. Juengel and Justus Nieland
Reflecting on the elusiveness of boxing as an object of critical scrutiny, Norman Mailer once rem... more Reflecting on the elusiveness of boxing as an object of critical scrutiny, Norman Mailer once remarked that "to try to learn from boxers [is] a quintessentially comic quest. Boxers are liars. . . . Once you knew what they thought, you could hit them. So their personalities become masterpieces of concealment" (43). Despite this belated caution, the drama inside the ring has long exhibited an almost allegorical power for men and women of letters eager to find cultural meaning in such a concentrated trial of the will. For instance, in William Cobbett's 1805 essay, "In Defense of Boxing," published in the weekly Political Register on the occasion of a Coroner's decision "wherein death was the consequence of a boxing-match," the persistent cries to "eradicate the practice of boxing" compel Cobbett to summon what he saw as a more debilitating cultural spectre: England's steady fall into effeminacy (172). He begins by valorizing the pugilistic arts as a civil means of settling quarrels in a frequently uncivil society, particularly in contradistinction to the decidedly craven sword-play of the French and Italians. For Cobbett, the issue at stake appears patently simple: "[W]e must either have cuttings and stabbings, or boxing"; however, as he continues, it becomes clear that the ramifications of this choice are farther reaching: "[F]or, much as I abhor cuttings and stabbings, I have as I hope most others of my countrymen have, a still greater abhorrence of submission to a foreign yoke. Commerce, Opulence, Luxury, Effeminacy, Cowardice, Slavery: these are the stages of national degradation. We are in the fourth; and I beg the reader to consider, to look into history, to trace the states in their fall, and then say how rapid is the latter part of the progress! Of the symptoms of effeminacy none is so certain as a change from athletic and hardy sports or exercises to those requiring less bodily strength and exposing the persons engaged in them to less bodily suffering" (175). Here Cobbett's defense of boxing for its own sake (as humane, spirited, manly) gives way to a figuration of the sport as a metonymic device for "deeds of bravery of a higher order," including the military safeguarding of national borders and the instantiation of hegemonic cultural values. While the sport's origins lie in "that generous mode of terminating quarrels between the common people, a mode by which the people of England have, for ages, been distinguished from those of all other countries" (172), Cobbett reimagines prize-fighting as a form of radical pedagogy that teaches class identification through public spectacle: "But boxing matches give rise to assemblages of the people; they tend to make the people bold: they produce a communication of notions of hardihood; they serve to remind men of the importance of bodily strength; they, each in its sphere, occasion a transient relaxation from labour; they tend, in short, to keep alive, even amongst the lowest of the people, some idea of independence; whereas amongst cutters and stabbers and poisoners there is necessarily a rivalship for quietness and secrecy . . . seeing that their mode of seeking satisfaction is with the greatest chance of success pursued in the dark" (178-79).
Studies in Romanticism, 1996
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Book Chapters by Scott J. Juengel
Papers by Scott J. Juengel
For my ninth birthday, my mother bought me a globe. I had asked for a pocket watch, but apparentl... more For my ninth birthday, my mother bought me a globe. I had asked for a pocket watch, but apparently mother thought I was too young for such dandyism and decided to promote another kind of worldliness. Despite being a so-called “educational toy,” it didn’t take long to realize that this was an awesome present: all the nations on earth were distinguished by different colors, mountain ranges were reproduced in tiny topographical relief, and the whole enterprise could spin on its base at tremendous speeds if necessary. There is a great sense of mastery in owning a globe so young, and as a boy growing up in the American Midwest during the Cold War, with two brothers in the military and another waiting his draft number, it wasn’t long before it fostered a strange geopolitical imaginary. After school I would give the globe a vigorous spin, then trace my finger lightly over its surface, from pole to pole, until the spinning stopped from the gentle friction. Two spins would produce a pair of ...
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Peer Reviewed Journal Articles by Scott J. Juengel
Book Chapters by Scott J. Juengel
Papers by Scott J. Juengel