Material Inspirations

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonah Siegel
Keyword(s):  
Henry James ◽  
George Eliot ◽  
William Blake ◽  
Walter Pater ◽  
John Ruskin ◽  
Critical Writing ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Pressure Shaping ◽  
History Of

This book is a study of the relationship between matter and idea that shaped the nineteenth-century culture of art, and that in turn determined the course of still-current accounts of art’s nature and value. Drawing on recent scholarship on the history of art and its institutions, Material Inspirations places cultural developments such as the emergence of new sites for exhibition and the astonishing proliferation of printed reproductions alongside a wide range of texts including novels, poems, travel guidebooks, compendia of antiquities, and especially the great line of critical writing that emerged in the period. The study aims to vivify a dynamic era, too often seen as static and unchanging, by emphasizing the transformations taking place throughout the period in precisely those areas that have appeared to promise little more than repetition or continuity: collection, exhibition, and reproduction. The book culminates with the two great critics of the period, John Ruskin and Walter Pater, but it also includes close analysis of other prose writers, as well as poets and novelists ranging from William Blake to Robert Browning, George Eliot to Henry James. Significant developments addressed include the vogue for the representation of Old Masters in the first half of the century, ongoing innovations in the creation and diffusion of reproductions, and the emergence of the field of art history itself. At the heart of each of these the book identifies a material pressure shaping concepts, texts, and works of art.

The Pace of Fiction

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Gingrich
Keyword(s):  
James Joyce ◽  
Henry James ◽  
George Eliot ◽  
Narrative Fiction ◽  
Modern Life ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

We talk about pace, often: the pace of history, modern life, everyday movement. And, really, we have talked about pace for centuries. But we hardly know what it means or how one might analyze it. The Pace of Fiction starts from the notion that all pace is, essentially, a product of narrative, and narrative fiction is what produces pace most elaborately. It moves forward as a history of transformations in narrative movement, from Fielding and Goethe and Austen to George Eliot, Flaubert, Henry James, James Joyce, Hemingway, Woolf, and Mann. Pace reveals narrative in its most elaborate effects. And the way pace changes in fiction expresses much of what we refer to as the pace of modernity.

The HUGE presence of Lindley Murray

English Today ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 54-61
Author(s):  
Lyda Fens–De Zeeuw
Keyword(s):  
Charles Dickens ◽  
George Eliot ◽  
Uncle Tom's Cabin ◽  
English Grammar ◽  
Publication History ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of ◽  
Edgar Allen Poe ◽  
To Receive ◽  
Nicholas Nickleby

The grammarian Lindley Murray (1745–1826), according to Monaghan (1996), was the author of the best selling English grammar book of all times, calledEnglish Grammarand first published in 1795. Not surprisingly, therefore, his work was subjected to severe criticism by later grammarians as well as by authors of usage guides, who may have thought that Murray's success might negatively influence the sales figures of their own books. As the publication history of the grammar in Alston (1965) suggests, Murray was also the most popular grammarian of the late 18thand perhaps the entire 19thcentury, and this is most clearly reflected in the way in which a wide range of 19th- and even some 20th-century literary authors, from both sides of the Atlantic, mentioned Lindley Murray in their novels. Examples are Harriet Beecher Stowe (Uncle Tom's Cabin, 1852), George Eliot (Middlemarch, 1871–2), Charles Dickens, in several of his novels (Sketches by Boz, 1836;Nicholas Nickleby, 1838–9;The Old Curiosity Shop1840–1;Dombey & Son, 1846–8); Oscar Wilde (Miner and Minor Poets, 1887) and James Joyce (Ulysses, 1918) (Fens–de Zeeuw, 2011: 170–2). Another example is Edgar Allen Poe, who according to Hayes (2000) grew up with Murray's textbooks and used his writings as a kind of linguistic touchstone, especially in his reviews. Many more writers could be mentioned, and not only literary ones, for in a recent paper in which Crystal (2018) analysed the presence of linguistic elements in issues ofPunchpublished during the 19thcentury, he discovered that ‘[w]heneverPunchdebates grammar, it refers to Lindley Murray’. Murray, according to Crystal, ‘is the only grammarian to receive any mention throughout the period, and his name turns up in 19 articles’ (Crystal, 2018: 86). Murray had become synonymous with grammar prescription, and even in the early 20thcentury, he was still referred to as ‘the father of English Grammar’ (Johnson, 1904: 365).

William Morris and the Aesthetics of Manly Labour

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Livesey
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Walter Pater ◽  
John Ruskin ◽  
William Morris ◽  
Aesthetic Development ◽  
Artistic Production ◽  
Radical Nature ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Revolution

This chapter traces this complex history of aestheticism, socialist aesthetics, and early modernism through a study of the development of William Morris's works in the later nineteenth century. Placing Morris's aesthetic development in the context of the writings of John Ruskin and Walter Pater, the discussion explore Morris's resistance to an emerging aesthetic that emphasized individual taste and consumption, rather than communal production. In his socialist essays, Signs of Change (1888) Morris developed an aesthetic continuum that enabled him to collapse the distinction between art and bodily labour and imagine a future of communal artistic production after the revolution. Both the radical nature of Morris's aesthetic and its preoccupation with productive masculinity are emphasized by contrasting his work to Wilde's essay ‘The Soul of Man under Socialism’ (1891).

Victorian Aesthetics

2015 ◽  
pp. 560-579
Author(s):  
Jonah Siegel
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
George Eliot ◽  
Elizabeth Barrett Browning ◽  
Walter Pater ◽  
Fundamental Characteristic ◽  
John Ruskin ◽  
William Morris ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
The World ◽  
The Aesthetic

Although the field of aesthetics was consolidated in the nineteenth century, its study has been shaped by two contradictory tendencies: (1) the insistence that the aesthetic realm needs to be autonomous, independent of the world of common experience; (2) the ethical or political insistence that autonomy is impossible. Starting from this characteristic antinomy, and tracing it back to early theoretical formulations in Kant and Schiller, this chapter illuminates the ways in which the constant pull between form and reality, or between art and experience, was a fundamental characteristic of aesthetics in the Victorian period. The writings of Matthew Arnold, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, George Eliot, Walter Pater, William Morris, John Ruskin, and others show the challenges of negotiating a concept that at times seems the only thing reconciling one to the world and at other times seems to be pulling one away to an impossible realm outside human existence.

Mingei [民芸]

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chiaki Ajioka
Keyword(s):  
Walt Whitman ◽  
William Blake ◽  
Direct Perception ◽  
John Ruskin ◽  
William Morris ◽  
Wide Range

Developed in Japan in the mid-1920s, "Mingei" denotes a concept that encompasses objects, aesthetics, and philosophy. Developed by three individuals—religious philosopher and aesthete Yanagi Muneyoshi (Sōetsu 柳宗悦, 1889–1961), and potters Hamada Shōji (浜田庄司, 1894–1978) and Kawai Kanjirō (河井寛次郎, 1890–1966)—Mingei recognizes the beauty in humble folk crafted objects sold at markets. The three founding members conceived the term minshū-tekikōgei (craft with characteristics of people), eventually shortening it to Mingei. Typical Mingei objects were handcrafted wares from pre-modern eras produced in large quantities for everyday use. Yanagi claimed that their beauty—the simplicity, robustness, and honesty of the material—was "born, not made." As such, one could recognize the beauty of said objects through "direct perception" or "seeing before knowing." A wide range of Japanese and non-Japanese ideas informed Mingei theory, including those of John Ruskin, William Morris, William Blake, Walt Whitman, Émile Mâle, and the works of British potter Bernard Leach (1887–1979). While Mingei began as a sense of appreciation, it developed into an artistic movement through research and propagation in the magazine Kōgei (Craft [1931–1951]).

Group Experiences and Individual Differences in Stuttering

2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (12) ◽  
pp. 4335-4350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seth E. Tichenor ◽  
J. Scott Yaruss
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Support Groups ◽  
Support Group ◽  
Affective States ◽  
Life Outcomes ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Group Experiences ◽  
History Of ◽  
Adults Who Stutter

Purpose This study explored group experiences and individual differences in the behaviors, thoughts, and feelings perceived by adults who stutter. Respondents' goals when speaking and prior participation in self-help/support groups were used to predict individual differences in reported behaviors, thoughts, and feelings. Method In this study, 502 adults who stutter completed a survey examining their behaviors, thoughts, and feelings in and around moments of stuttering. Data were analyzed to determine distributions of group and individual experiences. Results Speakers reported experiencing a wide range of both overt behaviors (e.g., repetitions) and covert behaviors (e.g., remaining silent, choosing not to speak). Having the goal of not stuttering when speaking was significantly associated with more covert behaviors and more negative cognitive and affective states, whereas a history of self-help/support group participation was significantly associated with a decreased probability of these behaviors and states. Conclusion Data from this survey suggest that participating in self-help/support groups and having a goal of communicating freely (as opposed to trying not to stutter) are associated with less negative life outcomes due to stuttering. Results further indicate that the behaviors, thoughts, and experiences most commonly reported by speakers may not be those that are most readily observed by listeners.

Introduction: Emotion, History and the Arts

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin Sullivan ◽  
Marie Louise Herzfeld-Schild
Keyword(s):  
Historical Change ◽  
Carson Mccullers ◽  
Emotional Life ◽  
Review Section ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
War Correspondents ◽  
History Of ◽  
Johan Huizinga

This introduction surveys the rise of the history of emotions as a field and the role of the arts in such developments. Reflecting on the foundational role of the arts in the early emotion-oriented histories of Johan Huizinga and Jacob Burkhardt, as well as the concerns about methodological impressionism that have sometimes arisen in response to such studies, the introduction considers how intensive engagements with the arts can open up new insights into past emotions while still being historically and theoretically rigorous. Drawing on a wide range of emotionally charged art works from different times and places—including the novels of Carson McCullers and Harriet Beecher-Stowe, the private poetry of neo-Confucian Chinese civil servants, the photojournalism of twentieth-century war correspondents, and music from Igor Stravinsky to the Beatles—the introduction proposes five ways in which art in all its forms contributes to emotional life and consequently to emotional histories: first, by incubating deep emotional experiences that contribute to formations of identity; second, by acting as a place for the expression of private or deviant emotions; third, by functioning as a barometer of wider cultural and attitudinal change; fourth, by serving as an engine of momentous historical change; and fifth, by working as a tool for emotional connection across communities, both within specific time periods but also across them. The introduction finishes by outlining how the special issue's five articles and review section address each of these categories, while also illustrating new methodological possibilities for the field.

Tanaka Kinuyo

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Development ◽  
Japanese Woman ◽  
Cultural Construction ◽  
Public Image ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Japanese History ◽  
Female Subjectivity ◽  
Japanese Cinema ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
History Of

This is the first book in English dedicated to the actress and director Tanaka Kinuyo. Praised as amongst the greatest actors in the history of Japanese cinema, Tanaka’s career spanned the industrial development of cinema - from silent to sound, monochrome to colour. Alongside featuring in films by Ozu, Mizoguchi, Naruse and Kurosawa, Tanaka was also the only Japanese woman filmmaker between 1953 and 1962, and her films tackled distinctly feminine topics such as prostitution and breast cancer. Because her career overlaps with a transformative period in Japan, especially for women, this close analysis of her fascinating life and work offers new perspectives into the Japanese history of women and classical era of national cinema. The first half of the book focuses on Tanaka as actress and analyses the elements and meanings associated with her star image, and her powerful embodiment of diverse, at times contradictory, ideological discourses. The second half is dedicated to Tanaka as director and explores her public image as filmmaker and her depiction of gender and sexuality against the national history in order to reflect on her role and style as author. With a special focus on the melodrama genre and on the sociopolitical and economic contexts of film production, the book offers a revision of theories of stardom, authorship, and women’s cinema. In examining Tanaka’s iconic reification of femininities in relation to politics, national identity, and memory, the chapters shed light on the cultural construction of female subjectivity and sexuality in Japanese popular culture.

Hard Objects in George Oppen's Discrete Series

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 496-517
Author(s):  
Ned Hercock
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Ludwig Wittgenstein ◽  
Discrete Series ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
John Ruskin ◽  
Gerard Manley Hopkins ◽  
Marcel Duchamp ◽  
The World ◽  
Production History ◽  
History Of

This essay examines the objects in George Oppen's Discrete Series (1934). It considers their primary property to be their hardness – many of them have distinctively uniform and impenetrable surfaces. This hardness and uniformity is contrasted with 19th century organicism (Gerard Manley Hopkins and John Ruskin). Taking my cue from Kirsten Blythe Painter I show how in their work with hard objects these poems participate within a wider cultural and philosophical turn towards hardness in the early twentieth century (Marcel Duchamp, Adolf Loos, Ludwig Wittgenstein and others). I describe the thinking these poems do with regard to industrialization and to human experience of a resolutely object world – I argue that the presentation of these objects bears witness to the production history of the type of objects which in this era are becoming preponderant in parts of the world. Finally, I suggest that the objects’ impenetrability offers a kind of anti-aesthetic relief: perception without conception. If ‘philosophy recognizes the Concept in everything’ it is still possible, these poems show, to experience resistance to this imperious process of conceptualization. Within thinking objects (poems) these are objects which do not think.

Walter Pater: Personality and Persons

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 234-250
Author(s):  
Stephen Cheeke
Keyword(s):  
Critical Reception ◽  
The Self ◽  
Walter Pater ◽  
History Of ◽  
Knowledge Of Persons

This article argues for the centrality of notions of personality and persons in the work of Walter Pater and asks how this fits in with his critical reception. Pater's writing is grounded in ideas of personality and persons, of personification, of personal gods and personalised history, of contending voices, and of the possibility of an interior conversation with the logos. Artworks move us as personalities do in life; the principle epistemological analogy is with the knowledge of persons – indeed, ideas are only grasped through the form they take in the individuals in whom they are manifested. The conscience is outwardly embodied in other persons, but also experienced as a conversation with a person inhabiting the most intimate and sovereign dimension of the self. Even when personality is conceived as the walls of a prison-house, it remains a powerful force, able to modify others. This article explores the ways in which these questions are ultimately connected to the paradoxes of Pater's own person and personality, and to the matter of his ‘style’.

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