School Ties

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
George Shuffelton

In the early nineteenth century, as alumni associations quickly became commonplace, Oxford and Cambridge colleges established their own alumni magazines and societies. This raises questions such as: what kinds of friendships were created at medieval universities? How commonly did university men retain lasting connections with those they had met years ago as scolares? The answers to these questions tell us something about the medieval universities as institutions capable of forging new social identities for their members. This chapter reviews the available evidence for friendships among old members of medieval Oxford and Cambridge. Nearly all of the evidence discussed comes from previously published sources, including institutional records and official correspondence, letters from formularies and at least one real-life example of how such formulas might be employed, the theories of friendship taught in the classroom and those theories as embodied in popular handbooks for students, and the evidence of wills.

2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-95
Author(s):  
Robert Burroughs

In hisMemoirs of anUnfortunate Son of Thespis(1818), the actor Edward Cape Everard recalled a performance of Sheridan'sSchool for Scandalthat was interrupted in its third act by a rowdy bunch of sailors. At the sight of Charles Surface drinking, the sailors allegedly left the auditorium, entered the stage, and accosted the actor playing Charles, “exclaiming ‘My eyes, you're a hearty fellow! Come, my tight one, hand us a glass’” (qtd. in Russell 104). As apocryphal as the encounter seems, it is not the only account of mariners rushing the early-nineteenth century stage to join in with the drama. In her analysis of these anecdotes Gillian Russell comments that though they may have been intended to depict the sailor “as naïve and unsophisticated, unable to make the distinction between fiction and reality. . . it is not surprising that the sailor should have disregarded the rules of mimesis and the distinction between stage and auditorium” (104), for the sailor's life lent itself to, and was structured by, theatricality. Service in “the theatres of war,” or more generally in the “wooden world” of the ship, demanded strict performance of custom and ritual in the forging of social identities and relations, not least of all in the ritualistic initiation ceremonies and corporal punishments that were enacted in front of the amassed audience of the crew (Russell 139–57; see Dening). At sea and in dock sailors entertained themselves with amateur theatricals. On shore, they were keen theatre-goers, and in auditoriums and elsewhere they played up to the characteristics of the sailor in the brazen assertion of an identity that was celebrated in stories, songs, and plays, but frequently also belittled, bemoaned, and victimized, the latter particularly while the press gangs were active.


2006 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 425-452 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHAEL BROWN

This article seeks, through the medium of a case study of the York Lunatic Asylum scandal of 1813 to 1815, to rethink aspects of the existing historiography of early nineteenth-century asylum reform. By moving away from the normative medical historical focus on ‘madness’ and ‘custody’, it relates the reform of lunatic asylums to the wider social, cultural, and political currents of the early nineteenth century. In particular, it demonstrates how the conflict over the administration of the York Asylum represented a clash between different conceptions of social power and public accountability which were rooted in mutually opposed cultural ideologies. In addition, by bringing more recent work on identity and performance to bear on a classic set of historical issues, it also seeks to investigate how the reform of lunatic asylums, and the cultural shifts which they embodied, impacted upon the social identities of medical practitioners engaged in the charitable care of the sick and mad.


2003 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 299-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans-JüRgen Lechtreck

Two early nineteenth century texts treating the production and use of wax models of fruit reveal the history of these objects in the context of courtly decoration. Both sources emphasise the models' decorative qualities and their suitability for display, properties which were not simply by-products of the realism that the use of wax allowed. Thus, such models were not regarded merely as visual aids for educational purposes. The artists who created them sought to entice collectors of art and natural history objects, as well as teachers and scientists. Wax models of fruits are known to have been collected and displayed as early as the seventeenth century, although only one such collection is extant. Before the early nineteenth century models of fruits made from wax or other materials (glass, marble, faience) were considered worthy of display because contemporaries attached great importance to mastery of the cultivation and grafting of fruit trees. This skill could only be demonstrated by actually showing the fruits themselves. Therefore, wax models made before the early nineteenth century may also be regarded as attempts to preserve natural products beyond the point of decay.


2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-216
Author(s):  
Sarah Irving-Stonebraker

Through an examination of the extensive papers, manuscripts and correspondence of American physician Benjamin Rush and his friends, this article argues that it is possible to map a network of Scottish-trained physicians in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Atlantic world. These physicians, whose members included Benjamin Rush, John Redman, John Morgan, Adam Kuhn, and others, not only brought the Edinburgh model for medical pedagogy across the Atlantic, but also disseminated Scottish stadial theories of development, which they applied to their study of the natural history and medical practices of Native Americans and slaves. In doing so, these physicians developed theories about the relationship between civilization, historical progress and the practice of medicine. Exploring this network deepens our understanding of the transnational intellectual geography of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century British World. This article develops, in relation to Scotland, a current strand of scholarship that maps the colonial and global contexts of Enlightenment thought.


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-67
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Ritchie

In 1814 in a small Highland township an unmarried girl, ostracised by her neighbours, gave birth. The baby died. The legal precognition permits a forensic, gendered examination of the internal dynamics of rural communities and how they responded to threats to social cohesion. In the Scottish ‘parish state’ disciplining sexual offences was a matter for church discipline. This case is situated in the early nineteenth-century Gàidhealtachd where and when church institutions were less powerful than in the post-Reformation Lowlands, the focus of most previous research. The article shows that the formal social control of kirk discipline was only part of a complex of behavioural controls, most of which were deployed within and by communities. Indeed, Scottish communities and churches were deeply entwined in terms of personnel; shared sexual prohibitions; and in the use of shaming as a primary method of social control. While there was something of a ‘female community’, this was not unconditionally supportive of all women nor was it ranged against men or patriarchal structures.


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