Invalid Modernism

2019 ◽  
pp. 26-45
Author(s):  
Michael Davidson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Henry James ◽  
Ezra Pound ◽  
The Body ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Art And Literature ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Aesthetic

The opening chapter discusses representations of the aesthete and convalescent as seminal figures in the late nineteenth-century formation of modernist art and literature. Unlike the more fashionable treatment of disease in the Victorian period, embodied often in the figure of the female invalid, modernist representations of disease or illness were more likely to be considered pathological, subject to increasing medicalization, diagnosis, and incarceration. The figures of the male aesthete and convalescent offer a more transgressive model to ideals of health and improvement by which modernity is measured. This figure was, not insignificantly, formative in the appearance of the sexual other or “invert” in sexological research. By looking at several writers—Friedrich Nietzsche, John Addington Symonds, Henry James, Virginia Woolf, Ezra Pound, and T. S. Eliot—this opening chapter seeks a correlation between the aesthetic and the body, between autonomy and contagion.

scholarly journals GEORGE HENRY FOX'S Photographic illustrations of skin diseases and the clinical photograph in late nineteenth-century America

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine E. A. Watson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New York ◽  
Skin Diseases ◽  
The Body ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Power Relationships ◽  
Nineteenth Century America ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Clinical Photograph ◽  
The Aesthetic

George Henry Fox was a New York physician and author in the late nineteenth century. His interest in collecting photographs of notable dermatological cases led to the publication of several photographically illustrated dermatology texts between 1879 and the early twentieth century. This thesis focuses on the fIrst and second editions of Fox's Photographic Illustrations of Skin Diseases, published in 1879 and 1885, respectively. The hand-coloured Artotype plates from these two editions are analyzed and contrasted in terms of the influence of studio portraiture, issues of patient anonymity and consent, and the aesthetic changes between editions. The power relationships and scientifIc classifIcation involved in depicting the body on ftlm are also considered. The books are on textualized with discussions of nineteenth-century American medical history, the use of clinical photographs as illustrations, photomechanical processes, late nineteenth-century dermatology texts, and Fox's biography.

scholarly journals GEORGE HENRY FOX'S Photographic illustrations of skin diseases and the clinical photograph in late nineteenth-century America

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine E. A. Watson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New York ◽  
Skin Diseases ◽  
The Body ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Power Relationships ◽  
Nineteenth Century America ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Clinical Photograph ◽  
The Aesthetic

George Henry Fox was a New York physician and author in the late nineteenth century. His interest in collecting photographs of notable dermatological cases led to the publication of several photographically illustrated dermatology texts between 1879 and the early twentieth century. This thesis focuses on the fIrst and second editions of Fox's Photographic Illustrations of Skin Diseases, published in 1879 and 1885, respectively. The hand-coloured Artotype plates from these two editions are analyzed and contrasted in terms of the influence of studio portraiture, issues of patient anonymity and consent, and the aesthetic changes between editions. The power relationships and scientifIc classifIcation involved in depicting the body on ftlm are also considered. The books are on textualized with discussions of nineteenth-century American medical history, the use of clinical photographs as illustrations, photomechanical processes, late nineteenth-century dermatology texts, and Fox's biography.

scholarly journals Insomnia and the late nineteenth-century insomniac: the case of Albert Kimball

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 20190074 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Beaumont
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sleep Problems ◽  
Urban Society ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
The Usa ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Individual

This article explores the emergence, in late nineteenth-century Britain and the USA, of the ‘insomniac’ as a distinct pathological and social archetype. Sleeplessness has of course been a human problem for millennia, but only since the late-Victorian period has there been a specific diagnostic name for the individual who suffers chronically from insufficient sleep. The introductory section of the article, which notes the current panic about sleep problems, offers a brief sketch of the history of sleeplessness, acknowledging the transhistorical nature of this condition but also pointing to the appearance, during the period of the Enlightenment, of the term ‘insomnia’ itself. The second section makes more specific historical claims about the rise of insomnia in the accelerating conditions of everyday life in urban society at the end of the nineteenth century. It traces the rise of the insomniac as such, especially in the context of medical debates about ‘neurasthenia’, as someone whose identity is constitutively defined by their inability to sleep. The third section, tightening the focus of the article, goes on to reconstruct the biography of one exemplary late nineteenth-century insomniac, the American dentist Albert Kimball, in order to illustrate the claim that insomnia was one of the pre-eminent symptoms of a certain crisis in industrial and metropolitan modernity as this social condition was lived by individuals at the fin de siècle .

Resonances of Henri Bergson's ‘music’ in the interwar aesthetic discourse of the journal Μακεδονικές Ημέρες: the idea of the nouveau romantisme

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-134
Author(s):  
Olga Bezantakou
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Narrative Fiction ◽  
Modernist Literature ◽  
Narrative Texts ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Aesthetic

This essay examines the metaphorical use of musical terms in Greek aesthetic discourse during the interwar period by illuminating a crucial yet neglected moment in the reception of anti-rationalistic philosophical and aesthetic tendencies that had greatly influenced European modernist literature since the late nineteenth century. In particular, it points out the ways the reception of Bergsonian theories in Greece co-determined the formation of a new concept of Modern Greek narrative fiction, clearing the ground for the first modernist attempts to ‘musicalize’ fiction. The essay thus proposes a broader perception of the term ‘musicalization’ than the mere imitation of musical techniques in narrative texts, since the aesthetic discourse features not only actual music but also ‘music’ as an aesthetic category synonymous with transcendence, ambiguity and fluidity.

‘Heroism displayed’: revisiting the Franklin Gallery at the Royal Naval Exhibition, 1891

Polar Record ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 185-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Huw W.G. Lewis-Jones
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Extensive Study ◽  
Entry Point ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Polar Regions ◽  
Juvenile Literature ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
Late Nineteenth

The Royal Naval Exhibition (RNE) of 1891 offers an important entry point for the study of naval mythmaking. Scrutinising one part of the RNE showcase, ‘The Franklin Gallery,’ highlights the imaginative potential of the polar regions as a resource for imperial visions. This paper provides a review of the RNE and, more closely, considers the ideology of polar exploration in the context of political debate and naval reforms. The utility of images of the Arctic presented at the RNE is discussed, in particular, its role in displaying the ‘heroic martyrdom’ of Sir John Franklin (1786–1847). The paper draws upon an extensive study of late nineteenth-century newspapers, illustrated weeklies, periodical reviews, popular adult and juvenile literature, art, poetry, pamphlets, exhibition catalogues and handbooks, and associated ephemera. It argues that the RNE played a central part in the construction and enshrining of narratives of naval and national achievement in the late-Victorian period and in reviving a British commitment to the exploration of the polar regions.

scholarly journals DID NINETEENTH CENTURY MARINE VERTEBRATE FOSSIL DISCOVERIES INFLUENCE SEA SERPENT REPORTS?

2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. G. M. PAXTON ◽  
D. NAISH
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Sea Serpent ◽  
Marine Reptile

ABSTRACT Here we test the hypothesis, first suggested by L. Sprague De Camp in 1968, that “After Mesozoic reptiles became well-known, reports of sea serpents, which until then had tended towards the serpentine, began to describe the monster as more and more resembling a Mesozoic marine reptile like a plesiosaur or a mosasaur.” This statement generates a number of testable specific hypotheses, namely: 1) there was a decline in reports where the body was described as serpent or eel-like; 2) there was an increase in reports with necks (a feature of plesiosaurs) or reports that mentioned plesiosaurs; and 3) there was an increase in mosasaur-like reports. Over the last 200 years, there is indeed evidence of a decline in serpentiform sea serpent reports and an increase in the proportion of reports with necks but there is no evidence for an increase in the proportion of mosasaur-like reports. However, witnesses only began to unequivocally compare sea serpents to prehistoric reptiles in the late nineteenth century, some fifty years after the suggestion was first made by naturalists.

scholarly journals Encounters with Sexuality: The Management of Inappropriate Body Behaviour and Body Talk in Late Nineteenth-Century British Columbia Schools

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Barman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
British Columbia ◽  
Public Education ◽  
Local Level ◽  
The Body ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Body Talk

Of all the issues that students, parents, teachers, and schools encounter, few are as difficult to manage as sexuality. We persist in believing that the body does not belong in the classroom except as an object of study or improvement. Inappropriate body behaviour and body talk with a sexual edge intimidates us, so much so that accounts tend to be oblique or non-existent. Their scarcity makes particularly valuable a set of records that survive from British Columbia in the late nineteenth century. Even though public education was then becoming centralized, a general unwillingness to face up to issues of sexuality caused almost all of the thirty allegations that were located in the superintendent of education’s correspondence to be resolved at the local level. The most frequent tactic used was parental boycott of the school. The allegations are divided between those against teachers and those against students. Regardless of who was implicated, the teacher was almost always caught in the middle and ended up resigning.

scholarly journals Encounters with Sexuality: The Management of Inappropriate Body Behaviour in Late-Nineteenth-Century British Columbia Schools

2004 ◽  
pp. 85-114
Author(s):  
Jean Barman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
British Columbia ◽  
Public Education ◽  
Local Level ◽  
The Body ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
Almost All

Of all the issues that students, parents, teachers, and schools encounter, few are so difficult to manage as sexuality. We persist in believing that the body does not belong in the classroom except as an object of study or improvement. Inappropriate body behaviour with a sexual edge intimidates us, so much so that accounts tend to be oblique or non-existent. Their scarcity makes particularly valuable a set of records that survive from British Columbia in the late nineteenth century. Even though public education was becoming centralized, a general unwillingness to face up to issues of sexuality caused almost all of the thirty allegations that were located in the Superintendent of Education’s correspondence to be resolved at the local level. The most frequent tactic was parental boycott of the school. The allegations divide between those against teachers and those against students. Regardless of who was implicated, the teacher was almost always caught in the middle and ended up resigning.

Aesthetic Perception and Embodied Cognition: Art and Literature at the Fin de Siècle

2020 ◽  
pp. 79-94
Author(s):  
Marion Thain
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Embodied Cognition ◽  
Distributed Cognition ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Embodied Perception ◽  
Aesthetic Perception ◽  
Vernon Lee ◽  
Art And Literature ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth

The modernity of late-nineteenth-century visualities has been influentially and persistently located in a disembodiment of the eye. Yet this was a period which saw theorists of aesthetic perception such as Vernon Lee and Bernard Berenson developing embodied formulations of vision that put sight and the other senses into intimate dialogue. Starting with Vernon Lee’s writing on ‘empathy’ and Berenson’s theorisation of ‘tactile values’, this essay argues for the importance of ideas of embodied perception to impressionist and post-impressionist art and literature, and suggests we can find in late-nineteenth-century aestheticism a colourful thread that needs to be woven into the history of what might now be called embodied cognition. To recognize this is to change our understanding of modernist visualities. The phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty is called on to help bridge, historically and conceptually, between the work of a group of aesthetes and decadents at the turn of the twentieth century and the contemporary framework of distributed cognition that is the basis for our project.

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