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Lionel Gossman
Gossman (left) presenting an award at the American Philosophical Society in 2007.
Born	(1929-05-31) May 31, 1929 Glasgow, Scotland, UK
Nationality	Scottish, American
Occupation(s)	Author, Professor
Movement	Lost Generation

Lionel Gossman (born May, 31, 1929) is a Scottish-American writer and Professor Emeritus of Romance Languages at Princeton University.

Gossman is a former Romance Languages professor at Johns Hopkins University and Princeton University. He has written 15 books and published numerous articles on the topics of

Early Life

Gossman was born in Glasgow's West End, a largely lower-middle class immigrant neighborhood in the 1930s. His grandparents were Russian immigrants who had arrived in the United Kingdom in the 1880s. His maternal family settled in Glasgow, while his paternal family settled in London, England, later moving to Glasgow (p1). During World War II, his family took in a young Czech refugee (p7). Gossman attended public primary and high school, mostly in Glasgow (p8).

I have been as faithful as I could to the Scottish educational tradition of hard work, learning, and honest argument.(p31)

Education

Gossman earned fifth place in Glasgow University's entrance exam. He graduated with honors in 1951, earning an M.A. in French and German Literature (p13). Though Gossman enjoyed German literature, the French faculty encouraged him to continue his studies in their department. In 1952, he earned the Diplôme d'Études Supérieures (M.A.) in French [Literature?] at La Sorbonne in Paris, France. His thesis was “L’idée de l’âge d’or dans Le Roman de la Rose" ("The Idea of the Golden Age in 'Le Roman de la Rose'") (p14). From 1952-1954, Gossman served in the Royal Navy as a Russian-English translator (p15).

Gossman earned his Ph.D. at St. Antony's College at Oxford University in 1957 (p15). At the time, he was the only student studying literature in the college (p16). Gossman studied "scholarly research and writing on medieval literature and history during the Enlightenment," and he presented his thesis "The World and Work of La Curne de Sainte-Palaye.”

Moving to the U.S.

Appealed to the "democratic instinct of Americans," Gossman accepted a teaching position at Johns Hopkins University in Balitmore, Maryland. He took the S.S. United States to New York, then was driven down the East Coast (p18). Gossman spent 17 years at Johns Hopkins, rising through the ranks. He started as Assistant Professor of French in the Department of Romance Languages, then became Professor in 1966 and Chair in 1975. Gossman says he was fortunate to have as colleagues and friends in those years Jacques Derrida, René Girard, Lucien Goldmann, Jean-François Lyotard, Louis Marin, and Michel Serres (p23).

It was a time of enormous intellectual ferment, much of it the work of French thinkers and writers […]. As phenomenology and existentialism were challenged by structuralism and structuralism in turn by "post-structuralism," we in the French section of the Romance Languages Department found ourselves in the role of mediators between our colleagues in the other disciplines and the French maîtres penseurs to whom we had direct access and whose aura illuminated us too to some extent. Curious physicists and puzzled English professors looked respectfully to us to provide explanations of the latest trends. French in those years was an extraordinarily lively discipline at the very center of the Humanities. (p19)

Princeton University

In 1976, Gossman made the "agonizing decision" to leave Johns Hopkins for Princeton University. In 1963, he had married Eva Reinitz, who joined Gossman as Director of the Board of Advisers at Princeton and served as a Dean (p27). Gossman spent 23 "calm, happy, productive in a scholarly sense and, on the whole, personally and intellectually fulfilling" years at Princeton. He served as undergraduate Department Representative, Director of Graduate Studies, and Chair of the Romance Languages Department (p28).

Accustomed, like most humanistic scholars, to solitary research, reflection, and writing, I learned through committee work to respect the processes of discussion, argumentation, and collaborative decision-making that are the best that is available to us in the many areas of human activity where logical demonstration is not possible. Rhetoric, I concluded, is a valid mode of reasoning and does not deserve the suspicion and disdain with which it has been regarded since the Romantics. Good judgment may well be something certain individuals are born with, but practice can improve and refine the exercise of judgment in nearly everyone. For a teacher, that was an important and heartening lesson. (p30)

Since retiring in 1999, Gossman has resumed his undergraduate studies of German culture. He has written a number of articles on aspects of nineteenth-century German art and cultural politics, including several studies of the Nazarene painters, a rebellious group of German artists, once internationally celebrated and influential and now largely forgotten outside Germany. The Nazarenes sought to abandon what they considered the wrong path taken by art since the Renaissance and to return to an earlier practice of art and an earlier conception of its function. The focus of Gossman’s interest was, on the one hand, the Nazarenes’ own “untimely” view and practice of art and, on the other, the role of modern museums and of art history in shaping the sensibility of the public and determining what kind of art it will respond to. This research has resulted so far in two studies of writers whose work Vogeler illustrated. -->SOURCE?

-->Gossman, Lionel. "Unwilling Moderns: The Nazarene Painters of the Nineteenth Century." Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide. 2.3 (Autumn 2003). http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=273:unwilling-moderns-the-nazarene-painters-of-the-nineteenth-century&catid=73:autumn03article&Itemid=84

-->Gossman, Lionel. "On the Nazarene Artists of the of the Early Nineteenth Century." 2001. http://www.princeton.edu/~lgossman/nazarene_essay.pdf

Books

Gossman's first book, "Men and Masks: A Study of Molière" (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1963) was written under the influence of Girard. -->MORE INFO

It was apiece of chutspa. In the spirit of the department of which Girard was the leading light and it was generously (too generously) received as a breath of fresh air in seventeenth century studies. (p21).

"Medievalism and the Ideologies of the Enlightenment: The World and Work of La Curne de Sainte-Palaye" (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1968) is a revision of his Ph.D. in Philosophy thesis. Gossman reverted to the more scholarly approach of his mentors, Frappier and Seznec, as well as to an earlier interest in the history, theory, and practice of historiography.

He followed this with "French Society and Culture: Background to Eighteenth Century Literature" (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1973), written primarily for use by undergraduate students. This little work examines the themes of how history influences literature and vice versa, and the relation between literature and historiography.

"Augustin Thierry and Liberal Historiography" (Middletown, CT, 1976)

"The Empire Unpossess'd: An Essay on Gibbon's Decline and Fall" (Cambridge, 1981, reissued 2009)

"Orpheus Philologus: Bachofen versus Mommsen on the Study of Antiquity" (American Philosophical Society, 1983)

"Toward a Rational Historiography" (American Philosophical Society,1989)

"Between History and Literature" (Cambridge, MA, 1990).

Over the years Gossman has gradually abandoned his earlier emphasis -- in opposition to the naïve positivism of many traditional historians -- on the literary and esthetic patterns structuring historical narratives in favor of a view of historiography as close to legal argument, in that it is based on evidence and plausibility and subject to criticism and review, rather than either a mirror image of reality or a purely imaginative construction made up of elements conventionally classified as “historical.” -->SOURCE?

"Basel in the Age of Burckhardt: A Study in Unseasonable Ideas" (University of Chicago Press, 2000; German translation 2006). After co-teaching with Carl Schorske of the History Department an undergraduate seminar on the civic culture of 19th century Basel, Switzerland, Gossman worked on this book for 20 years. The American Historical Association awarded it with the George L. Mosse prize. In this work Gossman argues that the peculiar, somewhat anachronistic political and social structure of Basel made it a favorable haven for “untimely” ideas that challenged the positivism and optimistic progressivism of the time: the philosophy of Nietzsche, the historiography of Bachofen and Burckhard, and the theology of Franz Overbeck. (p29)

In The Making of a Romantic Icon: The Religious Context of Friedrich Overbeck’s “Italia und Germania,” which was published by the American Philosophical Society in 2007 and was won the Society’s John Frederick Lewis Award for that year, Gossman turned his attention to a painting by a leading Nazarene artist which is still well-known in Germany. He proposed a new interpretation of it based on the many preparatory sketches for it by Overbeck and his close friend Franz Pforr and on the importance for the Nazarene painters of religious conversion, spiritual renewal, and brotherly love as the condition of the creation of art as they understood it. -->SOURCE?

Brownshirt Princess (Cambridge, 2009) is about a rebellious German aristocrat who subsequently developed into a fervent Nazi and used her literary talent to promote National Socialism, even after 1945.

A forthcoming critical edition, in a new English translation, of an autobiographical memoir by an Austrian countess who, in the same period, became a Communist and devoted her considerable literary talent to the cause of socialism and the struggle against National Socialism and anti-Semitism, is intended to revive awareness of a literary corpus Gossman considers unjustly neglected, of high quality, and of great interest to cultural historians and students of women’s history (The End and the Beginning: A Memoir of the Years 1883 to 1917, by Herminia Zur Mühlen, expected publication date 2010). -->SOURCE?

Gossman is currently working on a study of Heinrich Vogeler, a successful turn-of-the century German artist and illustrator and a friend of the poet Rilke. Vogeler was transformed by the experience of the First World War from a dandy and aesthete into a left-wing anarchist and finally a committed Communist. He emigrated to the Soviet Union in the early 1930s and died there in 1942. Gossman is interested in Vogeler’s dogged, ultimately unsuccessful search for an artistic form appropriate to his changed convictions and worldview. -->SOURCE?

Additional Awards

In 1990 he was a recipient of Princeton’s Howard T. Berhman Award for distinguished service in the humanities

In 1991 he was made an Officier in the order of the Palmes Académiques

since 1997, the American Philosophical Society, to membership of which he was elected in 1996

In 2005 he received an honorary degree of Doctor of Humanities from Princeton University.

References

"In the Footsteps of Giants: My Itinerary from Glasgow to Princeton." DATE??? http://www.princeton.edu/~lgossman/shortbio.pdf

"CV." Gossman, Jeffrey Lionel. http://www.princeton.edu/fit/people/data/l/lgossman/CV.pdf

ORIGINAL

educated at Glasgow (M.A.Hons. in French and German), Paris (Diplôme d’études supérieures, with a thesis, directed by Jean Frappier, on “L’Idée de l’Age d’Or dans Le Roman de la Rose”), and Oxford (D.Phil. dissertation on medieval studies in the eighteenth century, directed by Jean Seznec), Gossman came to the U.S in 1958 as Assistant Professor of French in the Department of Romance Languages at Johns Hopkins. He rose through the ranks, becoming Professor in 1966 and Chair in 1975. It was a time of great intellectual ferment at Hopkins and Gossman was fortunate to have as colleagues and friends in those years Jacques Derrida, René Girard, Lucien Goldmann, Jean-François Lyotard, Louis Marin, and Michel Serres.

His first book, Men and Masks: A Study of Molière (Baltimore, 1963), was written under the influence of Girard. It was extremely successful, went through many printings, and remained in print until very recently. With his second, Medievalism and the Ideologies of the Enlightenment: The World and Work of La Curne de Sainte-Palaye (Baltimore, 1968), a revision of his D.Phil. thesis, Gossman reverted to the more scholarly approach of his mentors, Frappier and Seznec, as well as to an earlier interest in the history, theory, and practice of historiography. He followed this quite specialized study with French Society and Culture: Background to Eighteenth Century Literature (Englewood Cliffs: 1973), written at the invitation of the textbook publisher Prentice-Hall and intended primarily for use by undergraduate students. This little work nevertheless took up two themes that have consistently interested Gossman: how history influences literature and literature influences history, and the relation between literature and historiography.

In 1976, at the urging of his friend, the medievalist Karl D. Uitti, Gossman accepted an appointment at Princeton. As at Hopkins, he regularly taught seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literature. He also continued to offer graduate and undergraduate courses on the writing of history and published several books on the topic: Augustin Thierry and Liberal Historiography (Middletown, CT, 1976), The Empire Unpossess'd: An Essay on Gibbon's Decline and Fall (Cambridge, 1981, reissued 2009), Orpheus Philologus: Bachofen versus Mommsen on the Study of Antiquity (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1983), Toward a Rational Historiography (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society,1989), Between History and Literature (Cambridge, MA, 1990). Over the years Gossman has gradually abandoned his earlier emphasis -- in opposition to the naïve positivism of many traditional historians -- on the literary and esthetic patterns structuring historical narratives in favor of a view of historiography as close to legal argument, in that it is based on evidence and plausibility and subject to criticism and review, rather than either a mirror image of reality or a purely imaginative construction made up of elements conventionally classified as “historical.”

An undergraduate seminar co-taught in the European Cultural Studies Program at Princeton with historian Carl Schorske resulted in Basel in the Age of Burckhardt (Chicago, 2000; German transl. 2006), which was awarded the American Historical Association’s George L. Mosse prize. In this work Gossman argues that the peculiar, somewhat anachronistic political and social structure of the Swiss city of Basel in the nineteenth century made it a favorable haven for “untimely” ideas that challenged the positivism and optimistic progressivism of the time: the philosophy of Nietzsche, the historiography of Bachofen and Burckhard, and the theology of Franz Overbeck. Since retiring in 1999, Gossman has resumed his undergraduate studies of German culture. He has written a number of articles on aspects of nineteenth-century German art and cultural politics, including several studies of the Nazarene painters, a rebellious group of German artists, once internationally celebrated and influential and now largely forgotten outside Germany. The Nazarenes sought to abandon what they considered the wrong path taken by art since the Renaissance and to return to an earlier practice of art and an earlier conception of its function. The focus of Gossman’s interest was, on the one hand, the Nazarenes’ own “untimely” view and practice of art and, on the other, the role of modern museums and of art history in shaping the sensibility of the public and determining what kind of art it will respond to. In The Making of a Romantic Icon: The Religious Context of Friedrich Overbeck’s “Italia und Germania,” which was published by the American Philosophical Society in 2007 and was won the Society’s John Frederick Lewis Award for that year, Gossman turned his attention to a painting by a leading Nazarene artist which is still well-known in Germany. He proposed a new interpretation of it based on the many preparatory sketches for it by Overbeck and his close friend Franz Pforr and on the importance for the Nazarene painters of religious conversion, spiritual renewal, and brotherly love as the condition of the creation of art as they understood it.

Gossman is currently working on a study of Heinrich Vogeler, a successful turn-of-the century German artist and illustrator and a friend of the poet Rilke. Vogeler was transformed by the experience of the First World War from a dandy and aesthete into a left-wing anarchist and finally a committed Communist. He emigrated to the Soviet Union in the early 1930s and died there in 1942. Gossman is interested in Vogeler’s dogged, ultimately unsuccessful search for an artistic form appropriate to his changed convictions and worldview. This research has resulted so far in two studies of writers whose work Vogeler illustrated. Brownshirt Princess (Cambridge, 2009) is about a rebellious German aristocrat who subsequently developed into a fervent Nazi and used her literary talent to promote National Socialism, even after 1945. A forthcoming critical edition, in a new English translation, of an autobiographical memoir by an Austrian countess who, in the same period, became a Communist and devoted her considerable literary talent to the cause of socialism and the struggle against National Socialism and anti-Semitism, is intended to revive awareness of a literary corpus Gossman considers unjustly neglected, of high quality, and of great interest to cultural historians and students of women’s history (The End and the Beginning: A Memoir of the Years 1883 to 1917, by Herminia Zur Mühlen, expected publication date 2010).

Gossman has served on the editorial boards of the Johns Hopkins University Press, the Princeton University Press, and several scholarly journals, as well as on various committees of the Ford Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and, since 1997, the American Philosophical Society, to membership of which he was elected in 1996. In 1990 he was a recipient of Princeton’s Howard T. Berhman Award for distinguished service in the humanities; in 1991 he was made an Officier in the order of the Palmes Académiques; and in 2005 he received an honorary degree of Doctor of Humanities from Princeton University.

Gossman served on the editorial boards of the Johns Hopkins University Press (1967-76) and the Princeton University Press (1982-87), as well as on the boards of various scholarly journals (Comparative Literature, Eighteenth Century Studies, Clio, French Forum). In the late 1960s, I was a member of the selection committee of a Ford Foundation program designed to encourage more black Americans to pursue graduate studies. From 1978 until 1982 I was humanities representative on the selection committee of the Social Sciences Research Council. At Princeton, I was twice elected to two-year terms on the so-called Committee of Three (the Committee on Appointments and Advancements), one of the most important committees in the University. (p30)

, M. Taylor Pyne Professor of Romance Languages emeritus

Links:

Gossman, Lionel. "Unwilling Moderns: The Nazarene Painters of the Nineteenth Century." Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide. 2.3 (Autumn 2003). http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=273:unwilling-moderns-the-nazarene-painters-of-the-nineteenth-century&catid=73:autumn03article&Itemid=84

Gossman, Lionel. "Liebe Genossin: Hermynia Zur Mühlen: a Writer of Courage and Conviction." http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/muhlen/gossman.html

http://www.princeton.edu/~lgossman/webwork.htm

http://www.princeton.edu/~images/courseware/audio/gossman/lionelgossman.html http://tigernet.princeton.edu/Education/nazarenes.asp

http://www.openbookpublishers.com/product.php/18/1/brownshirt-princess---a-study-of-the--nazi-conscience----paperback-edition/a4c18da648a097cef0cdb59bc48b0030