The Operatic Voice of Leoni the Jew: Between the Synagogue and the Theater in Late Georgian Britain

2017 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 295-321
Author(s):  
Uri Erman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Public ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Musical Works ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Anti Jewish

AbstractMichael Leoni, a leading singer in late eighteenth-century London, became famous for his role in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's anti-Jewish operaThe Duenna. He was discovered, however, at the Jewish synagogue, where his singing enthralled non-Jews in the early 1770s. Tracing Leoni's public reception, this article argues that the performative effect of his singing had a multifaceted relation to his audience's psychology of prejudice, serving to both reiterate and reconfigure a variety of preconceptions regarding the Jews. Leoni's intervention through operatic singing was particularly significant––a powerful, bodily manifestation that was capable of transforming listeners while exhibiting the deep acculturation of the singer himself. The ambivalence triggered by his performances would go on to define the public reception of other Jewish singers, particularly that of Leoni's protégé, John Braham, Britain's leading tenor in the early nineteenth century. Ultimately, the experience of these Jews' performances could not be easily deconstructed, as the Jewish performers' voices were emanating from within written, sometimes canonical, musical works. This representational impasse gave rise to a public discourse intent on deciphering their Jewishness, raising questions of interpretation, intention, and confession.

Geopolitics of Comparison: World Literature Avant la Lettre

2021 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 255-269
Author(s):  
Waïl S. Hassan
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Comparative Literature ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
History Of

Abstract According to a well-known narrative, the concept of Weltliteratur and its academic correlative, the discipline of comparative literature, originated in Germany and France in the early nineteenth century, influenced by the spread of scientism and nationalism. But there is another genesis story that begins in the late eighteenth century in Spain and Italy, countries with histories entangled with the Arab presence in Europe during the medieval period. Emphasizing the role of Arabic in the formation of European literatures, Juan Andrés wrote the first comparative history of “all literature,” before the concepts of Weltliteratur and comparative literature gained currency. The divergence of the two genesis stories is the result of competing geopolitical interests, which determine which literatures enter into the sphere of comparison, on what terms, within which paradigms, and under what ideological and discursive conditions.

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck's Quest for Natural Species

1996 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 541-553
Author(s):  
Alexandre Métraux
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Adult Life ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829) was a prolific writer, a multifaceted naturalist, and a zoologist by second profession. Throughout his adult life he lived up to his passion of politely contributing to the advancement of natural philosophy by publishing more than 30,000 pages, probably too much for even the most scrupulous (and persevering) historians of science who seek to reconstruct his theories and to shed some light on the role he played in late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century biology.

scholarly journals Peter the Great as Antichrist: The Secular Sources of an Old Believer Compilation from Holy Scripture

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maureen Perrie
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Old Believers ◽  
Similar Role ◽  
Peter The Great ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Made In

This article is devoted to an Old Believer work about Peter the Great, known as A Compilation from Holy Scripture about the Antichrist, which was first published in 1861. Some scholars have suggested that the work dates back to Peter’s reign, when many traditionally minded Orthodox Christians regarded the tsar as the Antichrist. The author of this article argues, however, that the work dates from the early nineteenth century, and that the case it makes for Peter’s identity as Antichrist is based primarily on tales about the tsar which were published in the late eighteenth century. On the basis of anecdotes about Peter’s conception, for example, the author of the Compilation drew a comparison with the Annunciation, the Epiphany, and the Feast of the Circumcision, to demonstrate a sacrilegious parallel between Peter’s biography and that of Christ, which “proved” that Peter was the Antichrist. The Compilation also cites works which seem to blasphemously suggest that Peter was God incarnate, in order to argue that the tsar was the embodiment not of God, but of Satan. Finally, when one work praised Catherine the Great for representing “the spirit of Peter the Great”, the compiler concluded that the spirit of all subsequent Russian rulers was also the spirit of Peter, that is, the spirit of the Antichrist. This is an idiosyncratic version of the argument made in the late eighteenth century by Evfimii, the founder of the Old Believer sect of the beguny, that Peter had founded a dynasty of Antichrists, and that all “true Christians” should flee from his realm. The distinguished Russian scholars Viktor Zhivov and Boris Uspenskii have argued that the metaphorical sacralisation of the monarch, in secular eighteenth-century panegyrics, was interpreted literally by some Old Believers and contributed to their identification of Peter as the Antichrist. The author of this article suggests that a similar role was played by more popular works such as the collections of anecdotes which presented the tsar as a God-like figure.

The Five Adored in Early-Nineteenth-Century Sikh Literature

2021 ◽  
pp. 87-116
Author(s):  
Louis E. Fenech
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Gradual Rise ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Origin Story ◽  
Power And Authority

This chapter begins with a summary of the early- to mid-eighteenth-century historical context, which was marked by a decline in the power and authority of the Mughal court and the gradual rise of Sikh power in the Punjab. It then moves on to examine the formation of the Panj Piare construct in the context of the rise of various armed ascetic movements in the late eighteenth century, many of which competed for resources with the various Khalsa Sikhs of the period. It ends by examining the origin story of the Five Beloved in early-nineteenth-century Sikh texts such as Gur-panth Prakāś, Siṅgh Sāgar, and the Sūraj Prakāś.

scholarly journals From Libidines nefandæ to sexual perversions

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 421-439 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diederik F Janssen
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Legal Medicine ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Conceptual Evolution

A conceptual evolution is traceable from early modern classifications of libido nefanda (execrable lust) to early nineteenth-century allusions to ‘perversion of the sexual instinct’, via pluralizing notions of coitus nefandus/sodomiticus in Martin Schurig’s work, and of sodomia impropria in seventeenth- through late eighteenth-century legal medicine. Johann Valentin Müller’s early breakdown of various unnatural penchants seemingly inspired similar lists in works by Johann Christoph Fahner and Johann Josef Bernt, and ultimately Heinrich Kaan. This allows an ante-dating of the ‘specification of the perverted’ (Foucault) often located in the late nineteenth century, and appreciation of pygmalionism and necrophilia as instances of ‘perverted sexual instinct’. In this light, Kaan’s early psychopathia sexualis was less innovative and more ambivalent than previously thought.

Between the Virtual and the Actual: Robert Barker's Panorama of London and the Multiplication of the Real in late eighteenth-century London1

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Otto
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Second Order ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Trompe L'oeil ◽  
The Real ◽  
Single View ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Or Practice

Abstract The panorama is usually identified as the culmination, for the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century, of Enlightenment attempts to produce a “second-order reality in which to play with or practice upon the first order”. It is therefore aligned with the modern attempt to contain everything within a single view or picture. In contrast, this paper argues that in the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century the panorama and the hyper-realistic illusions it conjured, paradoxically relied on and at the same time intensified the late eighteenth-century sense that first and second order realities (the “physical environment in which one is really present” and the environments presented by material or textual media) had diverged to a degree that was unprecedented. This at first somewhat counter-intuitive phenomenon occurs not despite but because of the panorama’s ability to simulate the real. The hyper-realistic virtual realities of the early panorama intensified late eighteenth-century interest in the observation of observation; presented perception as an event that did not require the presence of its apparent object, thus radicalising the achievements of Trompe l’Oeil painting; drew attention to the figural space of representation; and provided new evidence for the constructed and contingent nature of the real. The paper takes as its key foci Caspar David Friedrich’s “The Wanderer above a sea of Mists” (1818), the Leicester Square Panorama (opened 1793), and Barker’s panorama of London (1791 and 1795).

Orientalism, Medievalism, Colonialism, and Militarized Mercantilism

2020 ◽  
pp. 415-429
Author(s):  
Kathleen Davis ◽  
Nadia R. Altschul
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Spanish Empire ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
History Of

This chapter investigates the intersections of British medievalism and colonialism in two very different places in the world: early nineteenth-century Chile, as Britain exercised economic domination over parts of the former Spanish Empire (thus it will be termed neocolonial); and late eighteenth-century India, as British officials devised strategies for extracting revenue from Bengal. Despite their many differences, in both cases an area beyond Europe is defined as Moorish and its present is associated with Europe’s past, specifically with the centuries now termed ‘medieval’. In both cases, too, medievalization forwards the economic interests at the basis of this temporal discourse, which is also fully enmeshed in the history of Orientalism. These similarities demonstrate the value of studying the under-examined effects of British medievalism beyond the familiar national frameworks, and, more broadly, underscore the importance of investigating the global dimensions of temporalizing phenomena.

scholarly journals ‘Good Mother, Farewell’: Elizabeth Freeman's Silence and the Stories of Mumbet

2019 ◽  
Vol 92 (4) ◽  
pp. 584-614
Author(s):  
Sari Edelstein
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early American ◽  
Young Readers ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Legal Precedent ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
American Black ◽  
Long Life

This essay centers on the figure of Elizabeth Freeman, who was enslaved in Massachusetts in the late eighteenth-century and successfully sued the state for manumission, thus establishing a legal precedent for the abolition of slavery in the Commonwealth. This essay considers Freeman's biography, first, as it was written by her employers (the Sedgwicks) in the early nineteenth century; then, as it circulates in literature for young readers today; and finally, in relation to questions about the recovery and repurposing of early American black lives. It seeks to make visible what we do not know about Freeman while also examining the ideological consequences of the narratives that have been told about her long life.

‘And wouldst thou wrong thy only child?’: The Crisis of Affective Kinship in Coleridge's ‘Christabel’

Romanticism ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-77
Author(s):  
Rebekah Mitsein
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Only Child ◽  
Domestic Sphere ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth

Despite the tendency for scholars to read Samuel Taylor Coleridge's ‘Christabel’ as an unfinished poem, I argue that analysing the ‘Conclusion to Part II’ as the ending, so to speak, dramatises the tensions that accompanied evolving notions of the late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century British family. As consanguineous, patriarchal models of kinship began to be replaced by a more sentimental understanding of family, social and political writers increasingly espoused the theory that other kinds of social relationships could or should emulate affective kinship. Though Coleridge himself seems to have embraced this philosophy at one point, I argue that the ‘Conclusion to Part II’ brings kinship to the fore of ‘Christabel’ in a way that problematised these contemporary theories about families, both as systems in and of themselves and as the perceived building blocks of society. It does so, in part, by evoking Gothic portrayals of affective kinship from other literature of the time and then importing the anxieties of the Gothic into the domestic sphere.

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