EMPIRE AND ENLIGHTENMENT IN THREE LETTERS FROM SIR WILLIAM JONES TO GOVERNOR-GENERAL JOHN MACPHERSON

2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 541-551
Author(s):  
JOSHUA EHRLICH
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Close Association ◽  
Cultural Attitudes ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Imperial Politics ◽  
Sir William Jones

AbstractThese newly discovered letters help to reconstruct the close association between two seemingly disparate eighteenth-century Britons in India. Moreover, they suggest that a fixation on clashes of ‘cultural attitudes’ has distorted modern assessments of the politics of scholarly patronage in that era. The long-lauded William Jones and the long-dismissed John Macpherson were not so different after all. The views of each ranged from the sublime heights of Enlightened philosophy to the grubby depths of imperial politics.

‘Levelling the Sublime’

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron Shapiro
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Young People ◽  
Paradise Lost ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
English Prose ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
The Status

The eighteenth century saw the curious tradition of translating Milton’s Paradise Lost into normative English prose and verse. The status of these translations as literary curiosities belies their serious ambition: to secure a universal readership of this English classic, an ambition also articulated in contemporary works of criticism and commentaries. Rather than treating this cluster of works as adaptations, this chapter conceives of them as intralingual translations, thus positioning them in the terms with which their authors describe them and within the earlier tradition of translation-as-commentary. Milton’s English translators aim at making his epic accessible to women, ‘foreigners’, ‘young people’, and ‘those of a capacity and knowledge below the first class of learning’, even if that accessibility requires some rewriting. Borrowing methods from the teaching of Latin, these authors established a practice that persists to this day in student-friendly translations of English poetry.

scholarly journals The Winding Paths of Russian Imperial Politics: On Die Geburt des russländischen Imperiums: Herrschaftskonzepte und -praktiken im 18. Jahrhundert by Ricarda Vulpius

2022 ◽  
Vol 128 (5) ◽  
pp. 223-240
Author(s):  
Urszula Kosińska
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
Conceptual Background ◽  
Imperial Politics ◽  
The Relationship

The article discusses the book Die Geburt des russländischen Imperiums by Ricarda Vulpius, a publication that tracks the emergence of the conceptual background for governing the growing Russian Empire in the eighteenth century, when territorial gains rendered the country increasingly multinational, multi-faith and multicultural. In this paper, the book was treated as an inspiration for examining the relationship between the practices employed by Russia on newly acquired territories in the east and south of Asia, described by Vulpius in the book, and the Russian Empire’s policy towards Poland.

scholarly journals Declaration as Disavowal: The Politics of Race and Empire in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Stone Mackinnon
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Racial Politics ◽  
Universal Declaration ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
The World ◽  
Imperial Politics ◽  
Racial Domination ◽  
Politics Of Race ◽  
The Right

This article argues that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), by claiming certain inheritances from eighteenth-century American and French rights declarations, simultaneously disavowed others, reshaping the genre of the rights declaration in ways amenable to forms of imperial and racial domination. I begin by considering the rights declaration as genre, arguing that later participants can both inherit and disavow aspects of what came before. Then, drawing on original archival research, I consider the drafting of the UDHR, using as an entry point the reception of the NAACP’s Appeal to the World petition, edited by W.E.B. DuBois. I reconstruct conversations within the drafting committee about the right to petition, self-determination, and the right to rebellion, and the separation of the Declaration from the rights covenants, to illustrate the allegiances between US racial politics and French imperial politics, and their legacies for our contemporary conceptions of human rights.

Everyday Aesthetics and the Experience of the Profound

2020 ◽  
pp. 173-202
Author(s):  
Patrick Fessenbecker
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Formal Analysis ◽  
Literary Interpretation ◽  
Aesthetic Value ◽  
Literary Aesthetics ◽  
Intellectual Content ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Everyday Aesthetics ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Deep Thought

The oldest arguments justifying formal analysis of literature, of course, grow out of a longer tradition in aesthetics, one having its roots in the development of a theory of the aesthetic in the eighteenth century. Ultimately, to emphasize the content over the form in literary interpretation is to emphasize forms of aesthetic value other than the beautiful and the sublime: to read for the content, and particularly for the intellectual content, is to value a book because it is deep, thought-provoking, and profound. Yet far from ignoring a text’s aesthetic nature, in fact these latter ways of reading offer the possibility for a renewed justification for literary aesthetics, one especially salient given the deep skepticism that formalist accounts of aesthetic value evoke.

Literary motifs, musical form and the quest for the ‘Sublime’: Cherubini'sEliza ou le Voyage aux glaciers du Mont St Bernard

1993 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Fend
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Musical Form ◽  
Central Location ◽  
Comic Opera ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Personal Interaction ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
At Home

A common feature of Cherubini's Parisian operas of the 1790s is the displacement of one or more of the protagonists. They are out of sorts with their environment, experiencing a need to escape that prevents the traditional unity of place from focusing the drama. The heroine ofLodoïska(1791)isimprisoned in a tower; inEliza ou le Voyage aux glaciers du Mont St BernardFlorindo travels to Mont St Bernard to forget his beloved Eliza, who pursues him and saves him from suicide. For the heroine ofMédée(1797), Corinth represents unhappiness: she returns to her former home only to take revenge. InLes deux Journées(1800), Armand and Constance flee Paris to save their lives; even in the comic operaL'Hôtellerie portugaise(1798) the central location serves merely as a rendez-vous for the two lovers on their way to evade the wicked plans of Donna Gabriele's stepfather. These operas do not, in other words, unfold in reassuring environments where characters feel at home; nor are there neutral backgrounds that enable the drama to concentrate on personal interaction. What is more, although placing protagonists in such unhappy circumstances is widespread in late eighteenth-century opera, and ‘rescue operas’ in particular, it is at least arguable that Cherubini exploited their restlessness in a uniquely successful manner.

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