The Making of Modern Cynicism

"Mazella's genealogical analysis of 'cynicism' illuminates the literary, philosophical, and political history of this concept, casting a particularly rich light on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Mazella's book also contributes to the discussion of cynicism in contemporary politics, offering the ancient and early modern Cynic—the Diogenes figure—as a partial antidote to what cynicism has become in an age of media saturation. Written in a lively, accessible style, The Making of Modern Cynicism should be of interest to a broad academic audience." - Adam Potkay, The College of William and Mary

"[A] tour de force of scholarship and an argument whose complex components work like clockwork to illuminate the changing facets of cynicism.... This book's elegant prose, its learning, and its careful parsing of philosophical position with rhetorical strategy enable the reader to absorb the twists and turns of the fortunes of cynicism with a sense of lively engagement.... It has been a long time since I have read a book that left me feeling so nourished, so grateful, so optimistic." - The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation

"The book's argument takes us from Diogenes and his reception in the ancient world, through the early modern English appropriation of the figure of Diogenes, to the crucial example of Rousseau as the hinge upon which the ancient and modern version of cynicisms turn and the Burkean counter-Enlightenment reaction to Rousseau. Mazella then turns to the development of a form of cynicism related to dandyism in the late nineteenth century and closes with an epilogue on the use of cynicism as a critical political resource today. If they confined themselves to reading the Rousseau and Burke chapters, scholars in eighteenth century studies would be rewarded with extraordinary insights, but they would miss out on a tour de force of scholarship and an argument whose complex components work like clockwork to illuminate the changing facets of cynicism. More than that, Mazella's view of each age through the prism of these transformations turns out to afford a precise analysis of what is most significant in the intellectual debates of the time." - Molly Anne Rothenberg, Tulane University

"As social historians and cultural studies specialists have demonstrated,once you study enough five-year periods closely youare ready to make revisionary observations about movements andchange. The number of intellectual histories may be this year's preeminent harbinger of the future. That they are published bypresses not established as eighteenth-century powerhouses reinforcesthe sense that this is a movement. Mazella's The Making of Modern Cynicism is an ambitious study stretching from Diogenesto modern politics. His engaging introduction sets the stage fora challenging examination of 'cynicism' that embraces its contradictionsand humankind's ambivalences toward it" - Paula R. Backscheider, SEL

"The Making of Modern Cynicism is an encyclopedic story of semantic and cultural sea change. Mazella shows how the 'Cynicism' of the ancient world, represented by the shadowy but powerful figure of Diogenes, turns into the watered-down 'cynicism' of the present. Along the way are some surprises: Oscar Wilde is predictably present, but so are Beau Brummell and even Jane Austen. An eye-opening account." - W. B. Carnochan, Emeritus, Stanford University