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.

Edmund Burke, Dissent and Church and State

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Fitzpatrick
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Edmund Burke ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Church State Relations ◽  
State Relations ◽  
The Church ◽  
At Home

This chapter examines Edmund Burke’s attitude towards Protestant dissenters, particularly the more radical or rational ones who were prominent in the late eighteenth century, as a way of understanding his changing attitude towards the Church of England and state. The Dissenters who attracted Burke’s attention were those who were interested in extending the terms of toleration both for ministers and for their laity. Initially Burke supported their aspirations, but from about 1780 things began to change. The catalyst for Burke’s emergence as leader of those who feared that revolution abroad might become a distemper at home was Richard Price’s Discourse on Love of Our Country. The chapter analyses how Burke moved from advocating toleration for Dissenters to become a staunch defender of establishment as to have ‘un-Whigged’ himself. It also considers the debate on the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts as well as Burke’s attitude towards Church–state relations.

‘Soothing Thoughts’

2019 ◽  
pp. 96-128
Author(s):  
Brittany Pladek
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Real ◽  
Natural Medicine ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Healing Power ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Lyrical Ballads ◽  
Romantic Medicine ◽  
Holistic Therapy

Chapter three begins the book’s survey of palliative poetics developed by Romantic writers, comparing Wordsworth’s ideas about poetic therapy with medical beliefs of the late eighteenth century. The therapeutic holism later ascribed to Wordsworth by literary critics was held by Romantic medicine to be a restorative power of nature, a ‘vis medicatrix naturae’ that could repair a broken constitution in ways doctors could not. But as medicine professionalized, they saw how claims that nature was the real healer could damage their reputation. Their compensatory shift to a palliative ethic was driven in part by a need to renegotiate medicine’s relationship with nature. Similarly, Wordsworth initially hoped his own poetry could replicate nature’s holistic therapy. But in Lyrical Ballads (1798), a collection whose Wordsworthian lyrics extol the superiority of natural medicine, Wordsworth realized his own art could not mimic nature’s healing power. As a result, he turns towards a poetics of palliation grounded in the ‘delight’ outlined by Edmund Burke’s 1757 Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful.

Brown and the Yellow Fever

2019 ◽  
pp. 383-398
Author(s):  
Scott Ellis
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Yellow Fever ◽  
Charles Brockden Brown ◽  
Founding Father ◽  
Robert Morris ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
At Home

This chapter explores the potential causes of and responses to the yellow fever outbreaks in Philadelphia and New York during the late eighteenth century. Disrupting routines, halting commerce, and endangering the health and welfare of residents of these areas, the outbreaks also play a central role in the writings of Charles Brockden Brown, who used them to frame some of his novels and tales and to position his characters in moments of crisis. Moreover, this chapter connects the dilemma in the “Man at Home” series to the founding father and debtor Robert Morris, and through this connection we see how Brown positions debt alongside yellow fever as social crises that his characters must navigate. By exploring how Brown used yellow fever in his writing and how scholars have interpreted this use, this chapter explains the multifaceted roles that the disease had on Brown and our understanding of his work.

Captain George Vancouver and British Columbia's First Play

2000 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-148
Author(s):  
James Hoffman
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
West Coast ◽  
Vancouver Island ◽  
The West ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Considerable Doubt ◽  
At Home

In June, 1790, in the midst of politically charged debates in Britain over the tiny trading port of Nootka Sound, on the west coast of what is now called Vancouver Island, a play opened in London that performed events both in the colony and at home—as the country prepared for war with Spain. In this article, I trace the historical and theatrical context of the staging of Nootka Sound; Or, Britain Prepar'd at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden. Creatively using the possible attendance of George Vancouver at the opening performance, I consider the ambivalent role this production played in the hegemonic operations of Empire in the late eighteenth century. Appearing centrally within the imperial dramatic apparatus, it nonetheless contained considerable doubt and dissent, even anti-colonial assertion. In its direct engagement with both the locale and the politics of the west coast, I make a case for calling Nootka Sound; Or, Britain Prepar'd British Columbia's first play.

HOW TO WRITE ABOUT INFLUENCE: ASSESSING EDMUND BURKE'S CONSERVATIVE LEGACIES

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 495-505
Author(s):  
CLAIRE RYDELL ARCENAS
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Edmund Burke ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Open Question ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

Edmund Burke is difficult to classify. Born in Ireland in 1730, he entered parliament in 1765 having already achieved literary distinction for several philosophical works, including On the origins of the sublime and beautiful (1757). His subsequent career as a Whig statesman, politician, and reformer spanned the tumultuous decades of the late eighteenth century and culminated, less than a decade before his death, in his famous polemic against the French Revolution, Reflections on the revolution in France (1790). Over the course of his life, Burke opined with such frequency on so many topics that the nature of his ‘philosophy’ remains an open question, and scholars continue to offer strikingly different interpretations of his life and legacies. ‘Burke's legacy to history’, historian Richard Bourke summarized, ‘has been a complicated affair’.

The Poor Soldier (1783)

10.31022/a006 ◽  
1978 ◽  
Author(s):  
John O’Keeffe ◽  
William Shield
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
George Washington ◽  
Comic Opera ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth

Eighteen lilting airs and a melodious overture complement the action in The Poor Soldier, a comic opera by John O'Keefe and William Shield that was the most popular afterpiece in late-eighteenth-century theater. This newly edited version is based on five scores of the period and fourteen libretti. The Poor Soldier will delight modern audiences as much as it did George Washington.

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