Fashionable Figures: Narrative Roundels and Narrative Borders in Nineteenth-Century Han Chinese Women’s Dress

Costume ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Silberstein
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Museum Collection ◽  
Late Qing ◽  
Royal Ontario Museum ◽  
Economic Context ◽  
Theatrical Performance ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
Close Study ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Women's Dress

Figural motifs have received little attention in Chinese dress and textile history; typically interpreted as generic ‘figures in gardens’, they have long been overshadowed by auspicious symbols. Yet embroiderers, like other craftsmen and women in Qing dynasty China (1644–1911), sought inspiration from the vast array of narratives that circulated in print and performance. This paper explores the trend for the figural through the close study of two embroidered jackets from the Royal Ontario Museum collection featuring dramatic scenery embroidered upon ‘narrative roundels’ and ‘narrative borders’. I argue that three primary factors explain the appearance and popularity of narrative imagery in mid- to late Qing dress and textiles: the importance of theatrical performance and narratives in nineteenth-century life; the dissemination of narrative imagery in printed anthologies and popular prints; and the commercialization of embroidery. By placing the fashion for these jackets firmly within the socio-economic context of nineteenth-century China, the paper provides a novel way of understanding the phenomena of narrative figures on women’s dress through the close relationship between popular culture and fashion in nineteenth-century Chinese women’s dress.

scholarly journals Towards a Spectatorial Approach to Drama Analysis

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 22-39
Author(s):  
Ulla Kallenbach ◽  
Annelis Kuhlmann
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Creative Processes ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Theatrical Performance ◽  
Historical Investigation ◽  
Methodological Approaches ◽  
The Spectator ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Analytical Practice

In recent years, the concept of dramaturgy has been expanded to include a wide range of new fields that rarely concern the analysis of the drama text itself, but rather the facilitation of creative processes. This article investigates dramaturgy as an analytical practice. The article provides an analytical, historical investigation of methodological approaches to drama analysis. The aim is to examine how drama analysis came to be regarded as a literary discipline that rarely considers aspects of performance and the material, scenic context for which the play was written. The study of drama thus became regarded as being distinct from theatre and performance studies. This approach, which has its roots in nineteenth century dramaturgy, effectively eliminated the spectator from its perspective in favour of a character and plot centred dramaturgy. It is the authors’ assertion that the drama text and theatrical performance should, nevertheless, be regarded as intrinsically interconnected and that the spectator must be “re-inserted” in the analysis of the written drama. The authors explore how we might re-think the field of dramaturgy as drama analysis by emphasizing the corporeal, spatial, performative, and cognitive aspects of the drama text together with an emphasis on the historical and scenic context.

American Custom, Ritual, and Holidays

2018 ◽  
pp. 255-276
Author(s):  
Jack Santino
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Life Course ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Public Events ◽  
Close Study ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Life Course ◽  
Comprehensive Study

Since the nineteenth century, attention in folklore and folklife studies has shifted from viewing certain customary symbolic actions such as “calendar customs” and rituals of the life course to a more inclusive performance-oriented perspective on holidays and customs. Folklorists recognize the multiplicity of events that people may consider ritual and festival, and the porous nature of these categories. The concept of the “sacred” has expanded to include realms other than the strictly religious, so as to include the political and other domains, both official and unofficial. A comprehensive study of ritual and festival incorporates a close study of folk and popular actions as well as institutional ceremony. In the twenty-first century, approaching events as both carnivalesque and ritualesque allows folklorists to describe purpose and intention in public events, and to account for political, commemorative, celebratory, and festive elements in any particular event.

scholarly journals Johann Michael von Hermann (1793–1855): A predecessor of Max Schweidler?

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 239-270
Author(s):  
Susanne Wagini ◽  
Katrin Holzherr
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Early History ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Conservation History ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
Close Study ◽  
Fresh Perspective ◽  
History Of ◽  
Paper Conservation

Abstract The restorer Johann Michael von Hermann (1793–1855), famous in the early nineteenth century, has long fallen into oblivion. A recent discovery of his work associated with old master prints at the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München has allowed a close study of his methods and skills as well as those of his pupil Ludwig Albert von Montmorillon (1794–1854), providing a fresh perspective on the early history of paper conservation. Von Hermann’s method of facsimile inserts was praised by his contemporaries, before Max Schweidler (1885–1953) described these methods in 1938. The present article provides biographical notes on both nineteenth century restorers, gives examples of prints treated by them and adds a chapter of conservation history crediting them with a place in the history of the discipline. In summary, this offers a surprising insight on how works of art used to be almost untraceably restored by this team of Munich-based restorers more than 150 years before Schweidler.

‘She will wear the britsch’: Masculinity and the iconography of Prince Albert

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 199-222
Author(s):  
Hannah Bradshaw
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Art History ◽  
Male Body ◽  
Masculine Ideology ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Female Rule ◽  
And Performance

This article examines the early representations of Prince Albert that either satirize or attempt to reconcile the hierarchical ambiguities and issue of threatened masculinity that resulted from unconventional male consortship and female rule. It concludes that the latter was achieved through the development of a suitable and legible iconography for a nineteenth-century male consort in adherence with British iconographic tradition and values. Drawing from methods in nineteenth-century art history as well as gender and performance studies and anthropology, it argues that images of the male body play a fundamental role in the construction and perpetuation of masculine ideology and subjectivity through the creation of the semblance of an innate and axiomatic masculine archetype. In doing so, this article problematizes and historicizes masculinity by illuminating the plurality of expressions of masculinity and rejecting the essentialist narrative of masculinity as something measurable or quantifiable, as well as ahistorical, atemporal, apolitical and heteronormative.

scholarly journals Heartfelt Love: Singing Maiden Characters in Romantic Vocal Music, 1800-1850

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Haiman Liu
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Vocal Music ◽  
First Century ◽  
Italian Opera ◽  
German Lieder ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Vocal Works ◽  
Female Singers ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Relationship

<p>The images of maidens in Italian opera and German lieder from the period 1800-1850 are vivid. In the plots of the operas and the scenes and stories of the lieder almost invariably these characters focus enthusiastically on heartfelt love. This exegesis explores the relationship between the expression of love by unmarried women in selected lieder and opera of the first half of the nineteenth century and performance of these works by the young soprano in the twenty-first century. In the period when these songs and operas were written, performers of lieder would often have been of a similar age to the maiden characters portrayed in the songs, and in the case of Italian opera at the time, the singers who created such roles were usually in their twenties or early thirties. As a young soprano myself, in my study I consider some questions which are relevant for twenty-first century female singers who choose to perform these nineteenth-century portrayals of virgin characters. The figures in the works I have selected to study display a wide variety of personalities, moods and emotions, from the tenacious wild rose in Schubert’s ‘Heidenröslein’, to his passionate Gretchen and the melancholic Amina in Bellini’s La Sonnambula. I consider how the soprano may express the different emotions involved and approach performing young maiden characters such as these, whose experiences of life and status in society may be substantially removed from twenty-first century experiences.   In order to address these questions, I examine the selected song and aria texts in terms of the relationship between the content of the stories and the characters, as well as analyzing the vocal skills that can be used and vocal effects that may be applied when shaping these roles according to the music as written. In addition, I combine the background to the story and the plot with the musical markings in selected phrases to explore the emotional variety of the characters so as to interpret the deeper significance in the compositions. Through learning and performing these particular pieces I have explored the vocal techniques which are required in singing them from a practical perspective and this enables me to contribute insights I have gained to the general understanding of the skills required for this particular area of the repertoire. Having chosen repertoire for this study which combines Italian opera arias and lieder, and I also consider how the differences I have found in the vocal works may reflect their respective genres and distinguish the skills required for each. Through writing about my own research into the performance of these works, I provide new insights and ideas about these maiden characters which may be applicable to any young sopranos who sing repertoire from this period, and useful for their own vocal perfo</p>

scholarly journals Gender, fashion and representation in nineteenth century British art

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Azadeh Monzavi
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Research Study ◽  
Major Research ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Visual Narratives ◽  
British Art ◽  
Artistic Production ◽  
Victorian Women ◽  
Women's Dress ◽  
British Culture

This Major Research Project (MRP) examines the artistic production of British culture in the second half of the Nineteenth Century from 1850–1900, while critically engaging with existing nineteenth century art and literature, in order to deepen the understanding of the immense role played by fashion in the lives of Victorian women. I have approached this research study not through the examination of actual dress in its materiality, but instead, through its visual representation in paintings. These sartorial embodiments of women’s dress could help extend our understanding of artworks that are rooted in visual narratives—both literally and figuratively. Thus, this project aims to re-imagine histories of art through the analysis of the clothed body of women in nineteenth century paintings—for it is through their sartorial choices that women defied the Victorian ideals of femininity and femaleness.

Faith in a Fashionable Age: Abraham Kuyper and Charles Taylor on the Secular Nexus Between Mode and Modernité

2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 297-314 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Stephen Covolo
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Charles Taylor ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
Magnum Opus ◽  
Secular Age ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis article examines two Christian thinkers who detect a close relationship between fashion and secularity. First, the article discusses Reformed theologian Abraham Kuyper’s suspicion that the French fashion of his day carried political, cultural and social capacities that reinforced secularization in nineteenth century Holland. Having considered Kuyper’s perspective, the article turns to contemporary Roman Catholic philosopher Charles Taylor’s understanding of fashion. Drawing on Taylor’s magnum opus, A Secular Age, the article traces fashion’s complicit relationship with secularity as a ‘fourth axis of simultaneity’. In spite of their very different historical, intellectual and confessional contexts, Kuyper and Taylor share a similar analysis of the secularizing power of fashion, thereby pointing a way forward for those seeking to understand the relationship between mode and modernité.

The Reception of Demotic Narrative

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Tait
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Reception Theory ◽  
Oral Literature ◽  
Limited Extent ◽  
Oral Performance ◽  
Ancient Egyptian ◽  
Prose Narratives ◽  
Egyptian Literature ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter discusses aspects of Demotic Egyptian prose narratives of the Greek and Roman periods, viewed against the background of the growing significance of reception theory in the study of ancient Egyptian literature in general. It reviews the development since the nineteenth century of ideas on the ancient audiences for Demotic literature. The problematic evidence for readers and performance is examined, to a very limited extent with reference to the nature of the finds and find-spots of manuscripts, but chiefly by paying attention to their format and their contents. As for the relationship with oral literature, it is suggested that the material essentially belonged to a written tradition, and was designed primarily for oral performance within temple communities.

Voices of Thunder

2019 ◽  
pp. 36-83
Author(s):  
Cheryl A. Wall
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Oral Performance ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
David Walker ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Written Word ◽  
Maria Stewart

This chapter accounts for the centrality of nineteenth-century black oral culture to the development of the essay as a distinct African American literary genre. The author illustrates how the sermons and orations of nineteenth-century men and women such as David Walker, Maria Stewart, Henry Highland Garnet, Frances Harper, and Fredrick Douglass laid the foundation for the African American essay. It is shown how these authors combined accounts of their personal experience with traditions of oral performance. Because the line between the spoken and written word was blurred by nineteenth-century conventions, these authors blended various rhetorical and performance strategies to shape the art of the essay. In doing so, these writers became “voices of thunder.”The essayists discussed in this chapter used biblical references and appropriated democratic discourse to advance anti-slavery agendas. They appropriated the rhetoric of the founding documents of the American republic and remade them into the rhetoric of counterrevolution. Their works emphasized the material realities of life in America for blacks, both enslaved and free. Their expressions of freedom, and the rhetorical strategies they modelled informed the work of their literary descendants.

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