Mystical Insight and Psychology in the Fin-De-Siecle Novel: HUYSMANS, BOURGET, D'ANNUNZIO

2008 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Wittman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Mystical Experience ◽  
Moral Order ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Linguistic Expression ◽  
External Quality ◽  
Fiction Writers ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Everyday Reality

This essay considers, first, how late nineteenth-century psychology and psychopathology seeks to distinguish between mystical experience and mental breakdown, as both are instances of a radical break in normal consciousness, and both can result in similar symptoms of dissociation and denial of everyday reality. Late nineteenth-century mystics and historians of mysticism claim that mystical experience is internal and self-validating and yet, as they increasingly reject any dogmatic interpretation, they also face a similar dilemma. In a variety of texts by psychologists and mystical thinkers, I show how narrative cohesion, seen as the outward, linguistic expression of an inner existential or even moral order, emerges as a possible criterion for distinguishing between “insanity” and “true insight.” The second part of the essay investigates how fiction about mystical experience and insanity questions this notion of narrative cohesion, foregrounding self-deception and the historical, received, external quality of language and narratives of the self. I argue then that for fiction writers, the truth of mystical experience is neither purely internal nor objectively verifiable, but lies in constant inter-subjective communication, questioning, and reinvention.

scholarly journals Identity considerations for a psychology based on a complex epistemology

2009 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 158-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Carlos Jaramillo Estrada
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Active Part ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Way

Born in the late nineteenth century, within the positivist paradigm, psychology has made important developments that have allowed its recognition in academia and labor. However, contextual issues have transformed the way we conceptualize reality, the world and man, perhaps in response to the poor capacity of the inherited paradigm to ensure quality of life and welfare of human beings. This has led to the birth and recognition of new paradigms, including complex epistemology, in various fields of the sphere of knowledge, which include the subjectivity, uncertainty, relativity of knowledge, conflict, the inclusion of "the observed" as an active part of the interventions and the relativity of a single knowable reality to move to co-constructed realities. It is proposed an approach to the identity consequences for a psychology based on complex epistemology, and the possible differences and relations with psychology, traditionally considered.

Machines, Markets, and Labor: The Carriage and Wagon Industry in Late-Nineteenth-Century Cincinnati

1977 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 308-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward P. Duggan
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Mass Production ◽  
Manufacturing Industries ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Innovative Process ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Important Center ◽  
Fuel Costs

Students of the innovative process in American manufacturing have emphasized the scarcity of labor and the consequent need for labor-saving machines. In the late nineteenth century one of the country's largest manufacturing industries was the production of carriages, which, in its most important center, Cincinnati, was organized on a mass production basis. But Professor Duggan finds that problems of the quantity and quality of labor were secondary in carriage factories, compared to other factors such as fuel costs, factory space, and the need to stabilize the quality and price of vehicles marketed by the industry as a whole.

The Treatment of the News in mid-Victorian Newspapers

1977 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 23-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy Brown
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Technical Equipment ◽  
Daily News ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Daily Telegraph ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Times

This paper is concerned with the way in which news was handled by the four main London dailies, The Times, the Daily News, the Daily Telegraph and the Standard which, by the late 1870s, enjoyed the largest circulations. They differed from each other considerably in character and history, and in the kind of historical record which they have left behind. Much more is known about The Times than about any of the others. In the 1860s it was a 16-page paper, costing 3d, with a circulation declining slowly from 65,000 to 60,000. The fact that it could maintain this circulation, when it was three times as expensive as its main rivals, is by itself evidence of the value that contemporaries placed upon it. It had far greater assets than any of its rivals, and the Walter family were willing to invest heavily in the paper as and when funds were needed. Its greater resources were shown, partly in its technical equipment, and partly in the range and quality of writing in the paper itself. The Times had more correspondents reporting more frequently and fully from more European capitals than its rivals, and much of its prestige had been derived from that fact. It also employed in London a staff of educated writers such as George Brodrick and Robert Lowe. Unlike its rivals it could afford to pay salaries which enabled it to impose on its writers the condition that they wrote for it exclusively. (The lives of a number of notable late nineteenth-century journalists show that they tried to make up income by writing too much simultaneously, for too many different publications.)

Free Verse

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niall Munro
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
English Language ◽  
Ezra Pound ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
Free Verse ◽  
Language Poetry ◽  
Victorian Poetry ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Free verse is a technique of poetic composition that was employed and discussed by poets and critics during the modernist period. Exemplified by a disregard for regular metre and rhyme, free verse came into English poetry via two main routes: the work of the American poet Walt Whitman, and late nineteenth-century French Symbolist poetry. Although not precisely equivalent, the French term vers libre began to be used interchangeably with free verse in the early 1910s when members of the Imagist movement began to advocate its use to develop an aesthetic that shifted verse written in English away from the Victorian poetry they considered hackneyed and full of unnecessary words. The movement toward free verse had a tremendous influence on English-language poetry throughout the modernist period and beyond, even though, by the 1920s and 30s, some of the mode’s earliest advocates (including Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot) were criticizing what they saw as a decline in the quality of poems written in free verse, and urging a return to the more formal features of rhyme and regular lineation.

Champagne

Creating Wine ◽  
2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Simpson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early History ◽  
Brand Names ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Commodity Chain ◽  
Local Production ◽  
Wine Quality ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth

This chapter looks briefly at the early history of champagne and the dramatic increase in production in the late nineteenth century. Champagne producers were the most successful of all producers in establishing brand names, informing consumers of wine quality, and associating the drink with the needs of the rapidly changing lifestyles of the middle and upper classes in rich urban societies during the nineteenth century. The chapter also considers the organization of the commodity chain favoring the champagne houses over British retailers, the response of the champagne houses and small growers to the phylloxera crisis, and the collapse of local production and importation of large quantities of outside wines after 1906. In the end, despite the crisis, the champagne producers were still more successful than those in other wine regions in controlling the quality of their product.

Impact of Duration Thresholds on Atlantic Tropical Cyclone Counts*

2010 ◽  
Vol 23 (10) ◽  
pp. 2508-2519 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher W. Landsea ◽  
Gabriel A. Vecchi ◽  
Lennart Bengtsson ◽  
Thomas R. Knutson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Time Series ◽  
Short Duration ◽  
Alternative Interpretation ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Climate Signal ◽  
Storm Frequency ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
National Hurricane Center

Abstract Records of Atlantic basin tropical cyclones (TCs) since the late nineteenth century indicate a very large upward trend in storm frequency. This increase in documented TCs has been previously interpreted as resulting from anthropogenic climate change. However, improvements in observing and recording practices provide an alternative interpretation for these changes: recent studies suggest that the number of potentially missed TCs is sufficient to explain a large part of the recorded increase in TC counts. This study explores the influence of another factor—TC duration—on observed changes in TC frequency, using a widely used Atlantic hurricane database (HURDAT). It is found that the occurrence of short-lived storms (duration of 2 days or less) in the database has increased dramatically, from less than one per year in the late nineteenth–early twentieth century to about five per year since about 2000, while medium- to long-lived storms have increased little, if at all. Thus, the previously documented increase in total TC frequency since the late nineteenth century in the database is primarily due to an increase in very short-lived TCs. The authors also undertake a sampling study based upon the distribution of ship observations, which provides quantitative estimates of the frequency of missed TCs, focusing just on the moderate to long-lived systems with durations exceeding 2 days in the raw HURDAT. Upon adding the estimated numbers of missed TCs, the time series of moderate to long-lived Atlantic TCs show substantial multidecadal variability, but neither time series exhibits a significant trend since the late nineteenth century, with a nominal decrease in the adjusted time series. Thus, to understand the source of the century-scale increase in Atlantic TC counts in HURDAT, one must explain the relatively monotonic increase in very short-duration storms since the late nineteenth century. While it is possible that the recorded increase in short-duration TCs represents a real climate signal, the authors consider that it is more plausible that the increase arises primarily from improvements in the quantity and quality of observations, along with enhanced interpretation techniques. These have allowed National Hurricane Center forecasters to better monitor and detect initial TC formation, and thus incorporate increasing numbers of very short-lived systems into the TC database.

scholarly journals Immigration and the maintenance of the religious moral order: the case of the Ruthenian immigration to Paraná in the late nineteenth century

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-196
Author(s):  
Paulo Renato Guérios
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Moral Order ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Immigrant Communities ◽  
The Social ◽  
Catholic Religion ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Church

This article focuses on the concrete conditions and the social processes involved in the maintenance or change of the moral order in immigrant communities. This question is addressed based on archival research of the events that resulted in the restoration of the authority of Greek catholic priests in the Ruthenian (Ukrainian) communities that settled in Paraná in the late nineteenth century. The analysis of the practices of the priests and of the settlers in the first years of their establishment in Brazil permits a reconstruction of the dynamics of the centralization of social life around the church, and the religious precepts of the Greek Catholic religion. The presentation of three cases in different communities with varying degrees of acceptance or rejection of the authority of the Uniate priests shows that the question of the maintenance of religious values in situations of diaspora can only be solved empirically.

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