Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Alejandro Vera
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Historical Documents ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Musical Practices ◽  
Similarities And Differences

The Introduction posits the theoretical concepts and bibliographical context for the book. Based on testimony from Josefa Soto, a nun who played the harp in the convent of La Victoria from the late eighteenth century onwards, it states that duality was an essential trait of colonial music and culture. Also, it explains some of the similarities and differences with previous studies about music in colonial cities, and reflects on the concepts of “thick narrative” (Burke), history, and microhistory (Ginzburg), among others. It then discusses the cities of Santiago and Lima, showing that the latter was the main referent for the former and that several of Santiaguino musical practices and culture can be better understood in the light of Lima’s influence. The Introduction concludes by describing the primary sources, including both historical documents and music scores found in several archives from Chile and abroad, the limitations of this research, and the acknowledgments.

How to do things with junk: exaptation in language evolution

1990 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Lass
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural Kind ◽  
Selective Pressure ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Social Darwinism ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Direct Applicability

One of the less rewarding of our common interdisciplinary pursuits is lifting theoretical concepts from subjects not our own, and using them in contexts very distant from those they were intended for. Such borrowings often turn from theoretical claims into sloppy metaphors, leading to varieties of ‘vulgar X-ism’, the resuit of overenthusiastic appropriation with insufficient sense of the subtlety or precise applicability of the originals. Spencer's ‘Social Darwinism’, vulgar-Freudian or vulgar-Marxist literary analysis and sociology are nice examples. Linguistics, being less unique than linguists often think, is no exception: Praguian and neo-Praguian functionalism may be a kind of vulgar Darwinism, extending notions of ‘adaptation’ or ‘selective pressure’ to the inappropriate domain of language Systems (see Lass, 1980a). But every once in a while such transfers seem to work, like Darwin's borrowings from late eighteenth-century Scottish economie theory; if not always through direct applicability, then by focusing on new ways of interpreting old data, or providing a basis for linking disparate phenomena as instances of a new (putative) natural kind.

Slavery and Ransom

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will Smiley
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Individual Characteristics ◽  
The State ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The Law

This chapter explores captives’ fates after their capture, all along the Ottoman land and maritime frontiers, arguing that this was largely determined by individuals’ value for ransom or sale. First this was a matter of localized customary law; then it became a matter of inter-imperial rules, the “Law of Ransom.” The chapter discusses the nature of slavery in the Ottoman Empire, emphasizing the role of elite households, and the varying prices for captives based on their individual characteristics. It shows that the Ottoman state participated in ransoming, buying, exploiting, and sometimes selling both female and male captives. The state particularly needed young men to row on its galleys, but this changed in the late eighteenth century as the fleet moved from oars to sails. The chapter then turns to ransom, showing that a captive’s ability to be ransomed, and value, depended on a variety of individualized factors.

Historical Romance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ina Ferris
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
Private Life ◽  
Distinct Form ◽  
Literary Field ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Historical Romance ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth

This chapter looks at historical romance. Late eighteenth-century historiography began to expand its purview to unofficial spheres of social, cultural, and private life typically cultivated by informal genres such as memoirs, biographies, and novels. The ‘matter’ of history was being increasingly redefined, and this had two key effects that bear on the question of historical romance. First, the ‘reframing’ of the historical field generated a marked reciprocity among the different historical genres in the literary field, as they borrowed material and tactics from one another; second, it led to a splintering albeit not displacement of ‘general’ history, as new branches of history writing took shape, notably that of literary history as a distinct form of history. Hence romance now denoted not only the realm of ‘fancy’ but a superseded literary form of renewed interest in the rethinking of the national past.

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