scholarly journals Hanswurst and Herr Ich: Subjection and Abjection in Enlightenment Censorship of the Comic Figure

2007 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 124-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Jürs-Munby
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Julia Kristeva ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Theatre Studies ◽  
Historical Relationship ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Historical Movement

The well-known ‘banishment’ of the popular comic figure Hanswurst from the German stage by Gottsched and the Neuber acting troupe in the early eighteenth century is usually read as part of the historical movement from improvised folk theatre to bourgeois literary theatre. In this article Karen Jürs-Munby goes beyond that received wisdom to discuss what kind of acting, what kind of body, and what kind of relationship between stage and audience were censored by banishing Hanswurst. Considering this censorship as part of the larger historical relationship between discourses on acting and the emergence of a modern self in the Enlightenment, she argues that the osmotic body and stage that Hanswurst stood for prevented the aesthetic mirroring relationship sought by eighteenth-century stage reformers in an increasing need for bourgeois self-representation. The Hanswurst banishment can be theorized with reference to Julia Kristeva as an abjection of grotesque acting – a form of acting whose political power to question the autonomous bourgeois subject was to be rediscovered by practitioners in the twentieth century. Karen Jürs-Munby is a lecturer in Theatre Studies at Lancaster University; she has published articles on theories and discourses of acting in the eighteenth and twentieth centuries and recently translated Hans-Thies Lehmann's Postdramatic Theatre.

The Gallic Singularity and the Royal Mistress

2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-66
Author(s):  
Christine Adams
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Political Power ◽  
The Political ◽  
Marie Antoinette ◽  
Louis Xvi ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Political Realm

The relationship of the French king and royal mistress, complementary but unequal, embodied the Gallic singularity; the royal mistress exercised a civilizing manner and the soft power of women on the king’s behalf. However, both her contemporaries and nineteenth- and early twentieth-century historians were uncomfortable with the mistress’s political power. Furthermore, paradoxical attitudes about French womanhood have led to analyses of her role that are often contradictory. Royal mistresses have simultaneously been celebrated for their civilizing effect in the realm of culture, chided for their frivolous expenditures on clothing and jewelry, and excoriated for their dangerous meddling in politics. Their increasing visibility in the political realm by the eighteenth century led many to blame Louis XV’s mistresses—along with Queen Marie-Antoinette, who exercised a similar influence over her husband, Louis XVI—for the degradation and eventual fall of the monarchy. This article reexamines the historiography of the royal mistress.

Orphans of the Empire: Lhasa’s Chinese Community from the Qing Era to the Early Twentieth Century

Modern China ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 009770042096992
Author(s):  
Huasha Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Influence ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Chinese Population ◽  
Chinese Community ◽  
Academic Assessment ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Traits ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century

This article analyzes the transformation of Lhasa’s Chinese community from the embodiment of an expansionist power in the early eighteenth century to the orphan of a fallen regime after the Qing Empire’s demise in 1911. Throughout the imperial era, this remote Chinese enclave represented Qing authority in Tibet and remained under the metropole’s strong political and social influence. Its members intermarried with the locals and adopted many Tibetan cultural traits. During the years surrounding the 1911 Xinhai Revolution, this community played a significant role in a series of interconnected political and ethnic confrontations that gave birth to the two antagonistic national bodies of Tibet and China. The community’s history and experiences challenge not only the academic assessment that Tibet’s Chinese population had fully assimilated into Tibetan society by the twentieth century but also the widespread image of pre-1951 Lhasa as a harmonious town of peaceful ethnic coexistence.

Handel to Tempah

Migrant City ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 281-306
Author(s):  
Panikos Panayi
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
National Level ◽  
Cultural Transfer ◽  
External Influences ◽  
Short Run ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
Evolution Of Music

This chapter explores how migrants have contributed to the evolution of music in London. Despite episodes of xenophobia in the London musical scene, xenophilia became stronger, partly driven by the fact that both music and musicians inevitably migrate. This is so that, while national traditions of music may emerge, the process of cultural transfer involving both sound and people mean that such traditions cannot remain sealed off from external influences, even if they may develop national-level identities, at least in the short run. While music and musicians crossed European boundaries, during the twentieth century both performers and their tunes have increasingly spanned global and consequently racial divides. The German assertion that nineteenth-century Britain constituted a ‘Land ohne Musik’ (land without music), while an exaggeration, partly explains the arrival of foreign musicians to Victorian London and the eras before and since. The constant settlement and visits by musicians to the British capital since the early eighteenth century meant that London did not become a city without music, even if the tunes and those who played them often originated from abroad.

Handel’s Transformative Compositional Practices

2021 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 479-502
Author(s):  
David Ross Hurley
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Vocal Music ◽  
Original Music ◽  
Developing Variation ◽  
Compositional History ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
Musical Transformations ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
First Time ◽  
Variation Process

In recent decades singers of Handel’s music have made great strides in recapturing the art of embellishing his music, thus breathing new life into forms such as the da capo aria. Yet Handel’s own “variations”—his development and transformation of musical material in his vocal music, important for understanding his compositional practice with borrowed as well as (presumably) original music—are not yet fully explored or appreciated. Admittedly, scholars have discussed musical procedures such as inserting, deleting, and reordering musical materials, as well as other Baroque combinatorial practices in Handel’s arias, but the musical transformations I discuss here are closer to a specifically Handelian brand of developing variation. To my knowledge, the concept of developing variation has never before been applied to early eighteenth-century music. I explore the relation of developing variation to drama (also rarely done) in two of Handel’s arias, providing a close examination of “Ombre, piante” from the opera Rodelinda and new thoughts about “Lament not thus,” originally intended for the oratorio Belshazzar. Although these arias belong to different genres and different stages of Handel’s career, they both exhibit material that undergoes a kind of progressive variation process that has tangible musical and dramatic ramifications, of interest to opera specialists and performers. Furthermore, both arias have a complicated compositional history; I offer fresh insights into the aesthetic qualities of each version, thereby throwing light on Handel’s possible compositional intentions. This article also discloses for the first time some recurring musical passages shared between “Lament not thus” and other pieces that could influence the listener’s interpretation of certain musico-dramatic gestures.

The Great Migration and Individual Travels: Precursors of Serbian Modernity?

2019 ◽  
pp. 150-169
Author(s):  
Dragana Grbić
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Great Migration ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
South Slavs ◽  
The Great Migration ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
Western European ◽  
European Thought

This chapter situates the travels of Dimitrije Dositej Obradović in the context of the late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Serbian Great Migration, which facilitated the dissemination of Western European thought throughout Serbia. Obradović’s travels typified this process. As a young man, he fled from a monastery and spent much of his life traveling through Germany, France, Italy, England and elsewhere in Europe. He paid his way by teaching languages, and when he returned home, he translated European works into the Serbian vernacular. His oeuvre brought the Enlightenment thought of Voltaire, Leibniz, and Kant to Serbian literature and introduced readers to the works of Fénelon, Rousseau, and Marmontel. Obradović’s writings, particularly his autobiography, not only shaped eighteenth-century Serbian culture, but also influenced South Slavs, Greeks, and Romanians in the Balkans. .

scholarly journals David Hume, the Académie des inscriptions and the Nature of Historical Evidence in the Early Eighteenth Century

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Pedro Faria
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Common Experience ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
Belles Lettres

Philosophical history became the Enlightenment genre of historical writing par excellence supposedly by “defeating” established humanist erudite history and antiquarianism. This article argues that, contrary to established perceptions, philosophical history developed out of a concern expressed by early eighteenth-century erudite historians about the nature of historical evidence: both David Hume—leading philosophical historian—and the members of the French erudite Académie des inscriptions et belles lettres shared a broadly Lockean approach to historical evidence, choosing verisimilitude to common experience as the key criterion of certainty. Indeed, Hume likely drew directly from the académiciens. Historical certainty is achieved, both sides concluded, by providing a verisimilar chain of causes of historical events, rather than mere lists of historical facts. Philosophical historians like Hume departed from the reformulated eighteenth-century version of erudite history by making causes the main object of history rather than merely a foundation of trustworthy factual accounts.

Theology and the Basis of Human Rights

1986 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 361-378
Author(s):  
John A. Henley
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Great Confidence ◽  
Specific Teaching

In the age of the Enlightenment men were inclined, despite their great confidence in human reason, to invoke the deity in support of ‘the rights of man and of the citizen’1 whereas theologians are nowadays somewhat hesitant in suggesting a possible theological basis for human rights.2 Whatever this may indicate about a more aggressive secularism and a more modest theology and church during much of the twentieth century, it will be the contention of this paper that those who drafted eighteenth century statements and declarations of human rights were closer to the truth about their basis. In support of this contention I shall argue, first, that the doubt which some philosophers have expressed about finding a sure foundation for human rights is quite justified and, second, that the purpose for which some theologians have recently offered a theological basis has therefore been unduly limited. Finally, however, and rather ironically, I shall demonstrate that the bases suggested by these theologians are far too grandiose and all embracing and that what is required is the quite specific teaching of eschatology, the theory of Christian hope.

The Royal Sign and Visual Literacy in Eighteenth-Century London

2016 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Koscak
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Art And Politics ◽  
Everyday Objects ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Aesthetic

AbstractThis article argues that the commercialization of monarchical culture is more complex than existing scholarship suggests. It explores the aesthetic dimensions of regal culture produced outside of the traditionally defined sphere of art and politics by focusing on the variety of royal images and symbols depicted on hanging signs in eighteenth-century London. Despite the overwhelming presence of kings and queens on signboards, few study these as a form of regal visual culture or seriously question the ways in which these everyday objects affected representations of royalty beyond asserting an unproblematic process of declension. Indeed, even in the Restoration and early eighteenth century, monarchical signs were the subject of criticism and debate. This article explains why this became the case, arguing that signs were criticized not because they were trivial commercial objects that cheapened royal charisma, but because they were overloaded with political meaning. They emblematized the failures of representation in the age of print and party politics by depicting the monarchy—the traditional center of representative stability—in ways that troubled interpretation and defied attempts to control the royal image. Nevertheless, regal images and objects circulating in urban spaces comprised a meaningful political-visual language that challenges largely accepted arguments about the aesthetic inadequacy and cultural unimportance of early eighteenth-century monarchy. Signs were part of an urban, graphic public sphere, used as objects of political debate, historical commemoration, and civic instruction.

Yokes of Gold and Threads of Silk: Sino-Tibetan competition for authority in early twentieth century Kham

2015 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 963-1009 ◽  
Author(s):  
SCOTT RELYEA
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Indirect Influence ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century

AbstractBeginning in the early eighteenth century, a bifurcated structure of authority in the Kham region of ethnographic Tibet frustrated attempts by both the Lhasa and Beijing governments to assert their unquestioned control over a myriad polities in the borderlands between Sichuan and Tibet. A tenuous accommodation of this structure persisted from the early eighteenth century until the first two decades of the twentieth century when powerful globalizing norms—territoriality and sovereignty—transformed both the understanding and expectations of territorial rule held by Qing and, later, Republican Chinese officials. Absolutist conceptions of these norms prompted an ambitious endeavour to shatter the bifurcated structure and undermine the Dalai Lama's spiritual influence on Kham society. Infrontier imperialism is used to analyse the incomplete implementation of resulting acculturative and incorporative policies, inflected by these two norms, which challenged the monasteries’ indirect influence on the lay rulers of Kham, initiating a struggle for authority that persists to this day.

ANTONIO VIVALDI AND THE SUBLIME SEASONS: SONORITY AND TEXTURE AS EXPRESSIVE DEVICES IN EARLY EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ITALIAN MUSIC

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
NICHOLAS LOCKEY
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Emotional Impact ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
Antonio Vivaldi ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Four Seasons ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
Italian Music ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Powerful Demonstration

ABSTRACTAntonio Vivaldi's cycle of violin concertos dramatizing the four seasons marked a substantial shift in the way that the seasons were depicted in the arts. Moving away from religious and mythological allegory, they exemplify a growing interest in descriptive representation of nature's power and in humanity's complex physical and emotional relationship with elements beyond its control. Positing new connections to Arcadian reform ideals of verisimilitude, this article addresses important questions concerning Vivaldi's pairing of sonnets with concertos and the aesthetic factors behind his choice of narrative topics to depict in the music. The article also demonstrates how Vivaldi used diverse textures and sonorities to create powerful contrasts that heighten the emotional impact of the aural imagery while underlining recurring expressive and pictorial motifs throughout the cycle. These last aspects, in particular, provide a new understanding of the historical significance of Vivaldi'sFour Seasonsas a powerful demonstration of both the expressive potential of the concerto genre and the still underappreciated art of orchestration during the early eighteenth century.

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