Sympathy in Action

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory S. Jay
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Sentimental Fiction ◽  
Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn ◽  
Uncle Tom's Cabin ◽  
Literary Forms ◽  
Black Characters ◽  
Patriarchal Power ◽  
Harmful Effects

Liberal race fiction originates in the novels of moral sentiment and philosophies of sympathy in the 18th century. The chapter establishes the principal components of those traditions. It then conducts readings of Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to show how the education of the heart works in their literary forms and arguments. Stowe’s depictions of both white and black characters are found to be influenced by “racialist” theories of her time that have both progressive and harmful effects. Her fiction relies on traditions from eighteenth-century moral philosophy as well as emergent feminist analyses of patriarchal power. Like Stowe, Twain draws on the devices of sentimental fiction in creating the relation of Huck and Jim as emotional rather than political. The didactic scene of Huck’s epiphany becomes central to the teaching of the book in the twentieth century.

Poetics and subjectivities between classicism and Romanticism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Kahn ◽  
Mark Lipovetsky ◽  
Irina Reyfman ◽  
Stephanie Sandler
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
Human Subjectivity ◽  
Literary Forms ◽  
Russian Poetry ◽  
Development Of Identity ◽  
Further Development

In the context of Sentimentalism in the 1770s, literary culture opened up to representations of human subjectivity. The chapter considers genres of poetry devoted to the themes of pleasure, death, and posterity. It also considers the spaces of poetry and modes of exchange, whether through the album, the salon, and the verse epistle. Two case studies explore the use of different literary forms in the further development of identity, individual and also authorial. The first looks at Radishchev’s experiment in writing a fictional diary as a psychological exercise. The second examines the tradition of imitation of Horace’s Monument poem in Russian poetry in the eighteenth century as well as by later poets, such as Pushkin and Brodsky. The case study shows how these Russian versions express changing ideas about imitation and originality as well as poets’ concern with posterity.

‘Tout, dans ses charmes, est dangereux’: music, gesture and the dangers of French pantomime, 1748–1775

2008 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 241-268
Author(s):  
HEDY LAW
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Claim ◽  
Potential Danger ◽  
Binary Opposition ◽  
High Culture ◽  
Social Dance ◽  
Social Thinking ◽  
Musical Syntax ◽  
Social Dances ◽  
Harmful Effects

AbstractIn 1779 Chabanon noted the potential danger inherent in gesture because it might produce instantaneous and harmful effects. This article examines how Rameau, Rousseau and Grétry incorporated putatively dangerous gestures into the pantomimes they wrote for their operas, and explains why these pantomimes matter at all. In Rameau's Pygmalion (1748), Rousseau's Le Devin du village (1752–3) and Grétry's Céphale et Procris (1773, 1775), pantomime was presented as a type of dance opposite to the conventional social dance. But the significance of this binary opposition changed drastically around 1750, in response to Rousseau's own moral philosophy developed most notably in the First Discourse (1750). Whereas the pantomimes in Rameau's Pygmalion dismiss peasants as uncultured, it is high culture that becomes the source of corruption in the pantomime of Rousseau's Le Devin du village, where uncultured peasants are praised for their morality. Grétry extended Rousseau's moral claim in the pantomime of Céphale et Procris by commending an uneducated girl who turns down sexual advances from a courtier. Central to these pantomimes are the ways in which musical syntax correlates with drama. Contrary to the predictable syntax in most social dances, these pantomimes bring to the surface syntactical anomalies that may be taken to represent moral licence: an unexpected pause, a jarring diminished-seventh chord, and a phrase in a minuet with odd-number bars communicate danger. Although social dances were still the backbone of most French operas, pantomime provided an experimental interface by which composers contested the meanings of expressive topoi; it thus emerged as a vehicle for progressive social thinking.

scholarly journals Translating national history for children: a case study of a classic

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-116
Author(s):  
B.J. Epstein
Keyword(s):  
Race Relations ◽  
Adult Readers ◽  
National History ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn ◽  
Black Characters ◽  
History Of ◽  
Child Readers ◽  
Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain’s classic novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is arguably about the history of theUnited States in terms of slavery and race relations. How, then, can this be translated to another language and culture, especially one with a very different background in regard to minorities? And in particular, how can this be translated for children, who have less knowledge about history and slavery than adult readers? In this essay, I analyse how Twain’s novel has been translated to Swedish. I study 15 translations. Surprisingly, I find that instead of retaining Twain’s even-handed portrayal of the two races and his acceptance of a wide variety of types of Americans, Swedish translators tend to emphasise the foreignness, otherness, and lack of education of the black characters. In other words, although the American setting is kept, the translators nevertheless give Swedish readers a very different understanding of theUnited Statesand slavery than that which Twain strove to give his American readers. This may reflect the differences in immigration and cultural makeup inSwedenversus inAmerica, but it radically changes the book as well as child readers’ understanding of what makes a nation.

The gender politics of ‘bluestocking philosophy’

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Ann Brooks
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social System ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Gender Politics ◽  
Public Intellectuals ◽  
Public Identity ◽  
The Social ◽  
Single Voice

This chapter discusses the gender politics of ‘bluestocking philosophy’. The idea of a single, unified conceptualization of what constituted a bluestocking and what was understood as a bluestocking philosophy is somewhat misleading, as the idea of a single voice emerging from this group is almost a contradiction in terms. What can be identified is who made up the bluestocking circles and what they aspired to be and to do. Elizabeth Montagu was a central figure in the development of bluestocking circles and, along with Elizabeth Vesey and Frances Boscawen, helped to forge a public identity for women public intellectuals through Montagu's own scholarship as well as her support for other women writers. The early bluestocking circles were not established as a vehicle for promoting equity or women's rights, or even rights of citizenship. However, they played an important role in the second half of the 18th century in entrenching cultural and social transformation into the social system. In addition, they ‘played a crucial role in a widening and defining of women's social roles in the eighteenth century’.

scholarly journals The 'spirit' and the 'letter' of the moral law: Text and commentary in the hermeneutics of German idealism, I

2009 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 143-157
Author(s):  
Vladimir Milisavljevic
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
German Idealism ◽  
Moral Law ◽  
Literal Interpretation ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Historical Origins

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on different aspects of the hermeneutical problem in post-Kantian philosophical 'constellation'. In this domain, the problem of the relationship between the text and its commentary is theorized in terms of the antithesis between 'Spirit' and 'Letter', which clearly has religious roots. Therefore, the first part of the paper examines the historical origins of this antithesis, as well as its application in philosophical discussions which developed by the end of the 18th century about the problem of finding the 'true' interpretation to Kant's philosophy. The second part of the text, which is to be published in the next issue of this review, brings the duality of spiritual and literal interpretation into closer connection with the topics of Kant's moral philosophy.

Budzhak Population: an experience of a fugitive review of 18th-century observations

2021 ◽  
pp. 53-74
Author(s):  
Nicolai Russev ◽  
◽  
Fedor Markov
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Natural Landscape ◽  
Muslim Population ◽  
Social Crisis ◽  
South Eastern ◽  
Eurasian Steppe ◽  
South Eastern Europe

Budzhak (in modern Moldova and Ukraine) is the western part of the Eurasian steppe, the natural character of which had determined the ways of the local life for centuries. The Ottoman and the Russian Empires had clashed here in the eighteenth century, on the eve of the European Enlightenment. This fight was to determine further prospects for development, while many contemporaries and eyewitnesses tried to guess any signs of these prospects. A profound social crisis in south-eastern Europe contributed to political and ethnic and confessional changes and was changing the natural landscape. The Turkic Muslim population had to leave these lands under the growing pressure of these changes, and the new population was predominantly Christian. Now the Christians determined the way of life in Budzhak, even its flora and fauna.

Tales of Two Families, 1793–1800

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Livesay
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Mixed Race ◽  
Sentimental Fiction ◽  
Legal Standing ◽  
Mothers Of Color ◽  
Key Characters

This chapter charts the experiences of mixed-race migrants competing with legitimate relatives in Britain. In particular, it examines a number of inheritance lawsuits between Jamaicans of color in Britain and their white relatives over a shared colonial estate. It contends that constrictions in the definition and legal standing of kinship at the turn to the nineteenth century suddenly made mixed-race Jamaicans improper members of extended, Atlantic families. Increasing discomfort with mixed-race family members is also demonstrated in sentimental fiction at the time. The chapter assesses a large number of novels and fictional tracts in the last decade of the eighteenth century that included migrants of color as key characters in their stories. The inclusion of such characters was employed to excoriate the illegitimacy, marginal position, and racial divergence of mixed-race people in Britain. Finally, the chapter traces the experiences of the mothers of color left in Jamaica and the ways they attempted to advocate for their children across the Atlantic.

Continuity and Intuition in Eighteenth-Century Analysis and in Kant

2020 ◽  
pp. 158-186
Author(s):  
Daniel Sutherland
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Analysis ◽  
The Continuum ◽  
Interesting Account ◽  
The Way

This chapter considers the status of geometrical and kinematic representations in the foundations of 18th century analysis and in Kant’s understanding of those foundations. It has two aims. First, relying on relatively recent reassessments of the history of analysis, it will attempt to bring forward a more accurate account of intuitive representation in 18th century analysis and the relation between British and Continental mathematics. Second, it will give a better account of Kant’s place in that history. The result shows that although Kant did no better at navigating the labyrinth of the continuum than his contemporaries, he had a more interesting and reasonable account of the foundations of analysis than an easy reading of either Kant or that history provides. It also permits a more accurate and interesting account of how and when a conception of foundations of analysis without intuitive representations emerged, and how that paved the way for Bolzano and Cauchy.

Political, Social, and Cultural Legacies

2020 ◽  
pp. 239-252
Author(s):  
J.S. Grewal
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Considerable Importance ◽  
Main Stream ◽  
The Third ◽  
Literary Forms ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Cultural Legacies

A long struggle for political power that culminated in the establishment of Khalsa Raj in the third quarter of the eighteenth century was the most striking legacy of Guru Gobind Singh. Significantly, a wide range of literature was produced during this period by Sikh writers in new as well as old literary forms. The Dasam Granth emerged as a text of considerable importance. The doctrines of Guru Granth and Guru Panth crystallized, and influenced the religious, social and political life of the Khalsa. The Singhs formed the main stream of the Sikh Panth at the end of the century. Singh identity was sharpened to make the Khalsa visibly the ‘third community’ (tisar panth).

Carmichael, Gershom (1672–1729)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Moore ◽  
Michael Silverthorne
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Francis Hutcheson ◽  
The University

Gershom Carmichael was a teacher and writer of pivotal importance for the Scottish Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. He was the first Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow, predecessor of Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith and Thomas Reid. Carmichael introduced the natural law tradition of Grotius, Pufendorf and Locke to the moral philosophy courses he taught at the University of Glasgow (1694–1729). His commentaries on Samuel Pufendorf’s work on the duty of man and citizen (1718 and 1724) made his teaching available to a wider readership in Great Britain and in Europe. He also composed an introduction to logic, Breviuscula Introductio ad Logicam, (1720 and 1722) and a brief system of natural theology, Synopsis Theologiae Naturalis (1729).

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