DELIGHTFUL COXCOMBS TO INDUSTRIOUS MEN: FASHIONABLE POLITICS IN CECIL AND PENDENNIS

2002 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 289-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire Nicolay
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Class A ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
A Site ◽  
Trade Office

THOMAS CARLYLE’S CONTEMPTUOUS DESCRIPTION of the dandy as “a Clothes-wearing Man, a Man whose trade, office, and existence consists in the wearing of Clothes” (313) has survived as the best-known definition of dandyism, which is generally equated with the foppery of eighteenth-century beaux and late nineteenth-century aesthetes. Actually, however, George Brummell (1778–1840), the primary architect of dandyism, developed not only a style of dress, but also a mode of behavior and style of wit that opposed ostentation. Brummell insisted that he was completely self-made, and his audacious self-transformation served as an example for both parvenus and dissatisfied nobles: the bourgeois might achieve upward mobility by distinguishing himself from his peers, and the noble could bolster his faltering status while retaining illusions of exclusivity. Aristocrats like Byron, Bulwer, and Wellington might effortlessly cultivate themselves and indulge their taste for luxury, while at the same time ambitious social climbers like Brummell, Disraeli, and Dickens might employ the codes of dandyism in order to establish places for themselves in the urban world. Thus, dandyism served as a nexus for the declining aristocratic elite and the rising middle class, a site where each was transformed by the dialectic interplay of aristocratic and individualistic ideals.

Schopenhauer’s Pessimism in Context

2020 ◽  
pp. 283-298
Author(s):  
Mark Migotti
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century

In this chapter, the author attempts to establish what is philosophically living and what is philosophically dead in Schopenhauer’s pessimism. Against the background of the intriguing the history of the terms “optimism” and “pessimism”—in debates about Leibniz’s theodicy in the early eighteenth century and the popularity of Schopenhauer in the late nineteenth century, respectively—the author points up the distinction between affirming life, which all living beings do naturally, and subscribing to philosophical optimism (or pessimism), which is possible only for reflective beings like us. Next, the author notes the significance of Schopenhauer’s claim that optimism is a necessary condition of theism and explains its bearing on his pessimistic argument for the moral unacceptability of suicide. The chapter concludes that Schopenhauer’s case for pessimism is not conclusive, but instructive; his dim view of the prospects for leading a truly rewarding, worthwhile human life draws vivid attention to important questions about how and to what degree an atheistic world can nevertheless be conducive to human flourishing.

scholarly journals The Westphalian model and sovereign equality

2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 641-660 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER M. R. STIRK
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
World War ◽  
Sovereign Equality ◽  
Normative Principle ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Second World

AbstractAlthough the Westphalian model takes many forms the association of Westphalian and sovereign equality is a prominent one. This article argues firstly that sovereign equality was not present as a normative principle at Westphalia. It argues further that while arguments for sovereign equality were present in the eighteenth century they did not rely on, or even suggest, a Westphalian provenance. It was, for good reasons, not until the late nineteenth century that the linkages of Westphalia and sovereign equality became commonplace, and even then sovereign equality and its linkage with Westphalia were disputed. It was not until after the Second World War, notably through the influential work of Leo Gross that the linkage of Westphalia and sovereign equality became not only widely accepted, but almost undisputed until quite recently. The article concludes by suggesting that not only did Gross bequeath a dubious historiography but that this historiography is an impediment to contemporary International Relations.

scholarly journals The Irish Céilí: A Site for Constructing, Experiencing, and Negotiating a Sense of Community and Identity

2011 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine E. Foley
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Sense Of Community ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Dance ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
A Site ◽  
Changing Role ◽  
Important Site

For over a hundred years the Irish céilí, as an ‘invented’ social dance event and mode of interaction, has played a significant and changing role. This paper examines the invention of this Irish dance event and how it has developed in Ireland throughout the twentieth century. From the Gaelic League's cultural nationalist, ideological agenda of the late nineteenth century, for a culturally unified Ireland, to the manifestation of a new cultural confidence in Ireland, from the 1970s, this paper explores how the céilí has provided an important site for the construction, experiencing and negotiation of different senses of community and identity.

Scottish Gothic Drama

2017 ◽  
pp. 59-74
Author(s):  
Barbara A. E. Bell
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Visual Effects ◽  
Gothic Revival ◽  
Performance Culture ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Music Hall ◽  
The Way

Scottish theatre, from the mid-eighteenth century onwards, has been characterised by a distinctive performance culture that values anti-illusionist techniques, breaking the fourth wall, music and song, strongly physical acting styles and striking visual effects. These were accepted traits of the Georgian theatre as a whole; however, they endured in Scotland through the music hall and pantomime traditions, when late nineteenth-century Western theatre was focused on realism/naturalism. Their importance to the search for a distinctive Scottish Gothic Drama lies in the way that the conditions of the Scottish theatre during the Gothic Revival valued these skills and effects. That theatre was heavily constricted in what it could play by censorship from London and writers were cautious in their approach to ‘national’ topics. At the same time a good deal of work portraying Scotland as an inherently Gothic setting was imported onto Scottish stages.

Ordering Empire and Democracy, 1902–1921

2020 ◽  
pp. 24-67
Author(s):  
Tobias Harper
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
British Empire ◽  
British Society ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
New Order ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Opening Up

This chapter examines the creation of new orders at the beginning of the twentieth century, which was the culmination of a prolonged period of “unprecedented honorific inventiveness” starting in the late nineteenth century. In Britain the new Order of the British Empire was branded the “Order of Britain’s Democracy” in recognition of the fact that it extended far deeper into non-elite classes in British society than any previous honour. Between 1917 and 1921 more than 20,000 people in Britain and throughout the British Empire were added to this new Order. This was an unprecedented number, orders of magnitude larger than honours lists in previous years. While the new Order was successful in reaching a wider, more middle-class audience than the honours system before the war, which was socially narrow, there was a substantial backlash to what was widely perceived by elites to be an excessive (and diluting) opening-up of the “fount of honour.” This backlash was connected to political controversies about the sale of honours that eventually helped bring about Lloyd George’s downfall. This chapter also contains a brief description of all the components of the British honours system at the beginning of the twentieth century.

The contribution of women to the Spanish linguistic tradition

2020 ◽  
pp. 121-144
Author(s):  
María Luisa Calero Vaquera
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
University Professors ◽  
Romance Language ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Linguistic Historiography

In Spain, despite the unfavourable environment, some exceptional women in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were eager readers of the classics; ‘learned in grammar’ and professors of Latin. At the same time, female ascetic-mystic writers helped to dignify the Spanish Romance language. The eighteenth century witnessed a proliferation of literary salons presided over by distinguished women, while translators abounded. By the late nineteenth century, female university professors were ceasing to be uncommon; they shone as translators and philologists, although certain renowned linguistic and literary institutions continued to close their doors to them. These women with a passion for languages made a key contribution to linguistics in Spain, but were sidelined due to the historical circumstances in which they lived; since then, they have faced a further exclusion, in that they are conspicuously absent from official linguistic historiography.

scholarly journals ‘What a Wonderful Change Have I Undergone…So Altered in Stature, Knowledge & Ideas!’: Apprenticeship, Adolescence and Growing Up in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Ulster

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leanne Calvert
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Young People ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Until the late nineteenth century, apprenticeship was the main way in which young people were trained in crafts and trades. Given that most apprenticeship terms lasted approximately seven years, young people could expect to spend a large part of their youth in service to another. Apprenticeship therefore coincided with an important phase in the life cycle of many young men (and women) during this period. A study of apprenticeship not only tells us how young people learned the skills with which they made their future living, it also casts light on the process of ‘growing up’. However, we still know little about the everyday lives of apprentices, their relationships with their masters, and how young people themselves understood the transition from adolescence to adulthood. Drawing largely on the diary of John Tennent (1772–1813), a grocer’s apprentice who kept a record of his time spent in service, this article aims to broaden our understanding of these themes in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Ireland. It demonstrates that, for young middle-class men like Tennent, apprenticeship played a key role in the transition from boy to manhood.

Recognizing Lincoln

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cara A. Finnegan
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Abraham Lincoln ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth

This chapter examines how viewers in the late nineteenth century made sense of a photograph of Abraham Lincoln, published by McClure's magazine thirty years after his assassination. Revealed to the American public in 1895, nearly five decades after its creation, the daguerreotype reproduction featured a Lincoln few had seen before: a thirty-something, well-groomed, middle-class gentleman. In order to understand viewers' readings of the Lincoln portrait, the chapter investigates portrait photography in relation to the discourses of phrenology and physiognomy. It shows that viewers treated the Lincoln portrait as a vehicle for the exploration of its subject's character. Based on their responses, the viewers saw in the image not only a Lincoln they recognized physically but one whose psychology and morality they recognized as well. Those who composed responses to the McClure's photograph tapped into powerful myths about Lincoln that circulated during the late nineteenth century.

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