A Tremendous Thing: Friendship from the "Iliad" to the Internet

by Gregory Jusdanis

Overview

"Why did you do all this for me?" Wilbur asked. "I don't deserve it. I've never done anything for you.""You have been my friend," replied Charlotte. "That in itself is a tremendous thing."—from Charlotte's Web by E. B. WhiteFriendship encompasses a wide range of social bonds, from playground companionship and wartime camaraderie to modern marriages and Facebook links. For many, friendship is more meaningful than familial ties. And yet it is our least codified relationship, with no legal standing or bureaucratic definition. In A Tremendous Thing, Gregory Jusdanis explores the complex, sometimes contradictory nature of friendship, reclaiming its importance in both society and the humanities today. Ranging widely in his discussion, he looks at the art of friendship and friendship in art, finding a compelling link between our need for friends and our engagement with fiction. Both, he contends, necessitate the possibility of entering invented worlds, of reading the minds of others, and of learning to live with people.Investigating the ethics, aesthetics, and politics of friendship, Jusdanis draws from the earliest writings to the present, from the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Iliad to Charlotte's Web and "Brokeback Mountain," as well as from philosophy, sociology, evolutionary biology, psychology, and political theory. He asks: What makes friends stay together? Why do we associate friendship with mourning? Does friendship contribute to the formation of political communities? Can friends desire each other? The history of friendship demonstrates that human beings are a mutually supportive species with an innate aptitude to envision and create ties with others. At a time when we are confronted by war, economic inequality, and climate change, Jusdanis suggests that we reclaim friendship to harness our capacity for cooperation and empathy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801452840
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	12/18/2014
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Gregory Jusdanis is Humanities Distinguished Professor at The Ohio State University and the author of several books, including Fiction Agonistes: In Defense of Literature and The Necessary Nation.

Table of Contents

Introduction1. The Politics of Friendship2. Mourning Becomes Friendship3. Duty and Desire4. Friends and LoversAfterword: Digital FriendsNotes
Works Cited
Index

What People are Saying About This

Theodore Ziolkowski

A Tremendous Thing is profoundly thoughtful and thought-provoking in its approach. Written in an accessible, even conversational style, it is a pleasure to read and has broad interdisciplinary appeal. Gregory Jusdanis's presentation of the changing nature of friendship from antiquity to the modern world is impressive.

William Flesch

In A Tremendous Thing, Gregory Jusdanis argues that we love literary works in something like the way we love friends, so that literary passion and friendship are mutually illuminating. His own example, in the care, patience, and devotion he gives to his reading and his thought, is the best demonstration of the argument he makes.

Editorial Reviews

Erudite and eloquent.... Though he draws on the work of historians, sociologists, and philosphers to contextualize his literary sources, the book's claim to novelty lies in its examination of how a few select themes relating to friendship have been portrayed in fiction.

CANADIAN JOURNAL OF HISTORY

"In A Tremendous Thing, Gregory Jusdanis argues that we love literary works in something like the way we love friends, so that literary passion and friendship are mutually illuminating. His own example, in the care, patience, and devotion he gives to his reading and his thought, is the best demonstration of the argument he makes."

William Flesch

"A Tremendous Thing is profoundly thoughtful and thought-provoking in its approach. Written in an accessible, even conversational style, it is a pleasure to read and has broad interdisciplinary appeal. Gregory Jusdanis's presentation of the changing nature of friendship from antiquity to the modern world is impressive."

Theodore Ziolkowski

"In A Tremendous Thing, Gregory Jusdanis argues that we love literary works in something like the way we love friends, so that literary passion and friendship are mutually illuminating. His own example, in the care, patience, and devotion he gives to his reading and his thought, is the best demonstration of the argument he makes."—William Flesch, Brandeis University, author of Comeuppance: Costly Signaling, Altruistic Punishment, and Other Biological Components of Fiction

"A Tremendous Thing is profoundly thoughtful and thought-provoking in its approach. Written in an accessible, even conversational style, it is a pleasure to read and has broad interdisciplinary appeal. Gregory Jusdanis's presentation of the changing nature of friendship from antiquity to the modern world is impressive."—Theodore Ziolkowski, Class of 1900 Professor of German and Comparative Literature, Emeritus, Princeton University, author of Gilgamesh among Us: Modern Encounters with the Ancient Epic

From the Publisher

12/01/2014
Jusdanis (Humanities Distinguished Professor, Ohio State Univ.; Fiction Agonistes) creatively explores humanness and human relationships by examining, first, the historically contingent nature of human self-interest after John Locke and Thomas Hobbes and the diminished space in philosophy and culture analysis given to "friendship." Secondly he considers the mode wherein literature assists in the process of and acts as a stand-in for the imaginative work required to engage in friendship with another person. To accomplish these goals, Jusdanis references such literary examples as Michel de Montaigne's personal essays on friends and World War I poetry's focus on relationships in the context of trench warfare. The author also considers the rise of specialization in society where, according to Georg Simmel, friendship is also a specialized activity, fragmented from other aspects of life. Jusdanis refers to the Iliad and Epic of Gilgamesh for examples of male-male friendship to show that death brings people together and that certain male friendships have only recently been labeled "homosexual," part of the cultural fragmentation process that has torn friendship down from its significant pedestal built by Aristotle, Plato, and others. But Jusdanis is optimistic about the future of friendship in the age of connected social networks because these kinds of relationships necessitate consistent imagination in interacting and communicating with "the other." In this, Jusdanis argues persuasively in defense of literature and that literary thinking has a place in the world today. VERDICT Ideal for readers with broad, nonacademic knowledge of literature and how one might use it to think about peaceful alternatives in the world.—Jesse A. Lambertson, Metamedia Management, LLC, Washington, DC

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