The naturalisation of nineteenth-century German Railways as depicted in visual discourse

2021 ◽  
pp. 002252662110311
Author(s):  
Zef Segal
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Visual Images ◽  
Natural Landscape ◽  
Local Elites ◽  
Visual Discourse ◽  
Travel Guide ◽  
Pastoral Landscapes ◽  
Railway System ◽  
Train System ◽  
Rapid Transformation

Despite the dramatic effect of the railway age on the natural surroundings, it was not seen necessarily as destructive to nature. Railways were both the epitome of progress as well as integral features in pastoral landscapes. This seemingly paradoxical perception of railways is partially explained by historicising the “naturalisation” of the German train system. This article describes the rapid transformation of the German train from a symbol of dynamic industrialisation to an integral part of the landscape. Visual images, such as lithographs and postcards, were the catalysts in this process. Railway companies, local elites and travel guide publishers promoted the process of “naturalisation” for economic reasons, but the iconography was a result of visual discourse in nineteenth-century German culture. This paper shows that unlike American, British and French depictions of railways, German artists portrayed a railway system, which rather than conquering nature, was blending peacefully into an existing natural landscape.

scholarly journals Portraying Blindness: Nineteenth-Century Images of Tactile Reading

2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather Tilley
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Education And Training ◽  
Visual Images ◽  
Blind People ◽  
Culture Theory ◽  
And Training

In this article, I examine images of blind people in nineteenth-century Europe and America, and question the ways in which shifting sensory hierarchies constituted the representation of blindness in this period. I focus particularly on images of blind people reading by touch, an activity that became a public symbol of the various initiatives and advancements in education and training that were celebrated by both blind and sighted spokespeople. My discussion is structured around institutionally- and individually-commissioned portraits and I distinguish between the different agendas shaping representations of blind people. These include instances where blind people's achievements are problematically displayed for sighted benefactors; as well as examples of blind people determining the compositional form and modes of circulation of their likenesses thus altering "key directions in figurative possibilities" (Snyder 173). Moreover, the portraits I consider demonstrate the multisensory status of images, alerting us to a nineteenth-century aesthetic that was shaped by touch as well as vision. I draw on sensory culture theory to argue that attending to the experience and representation of the haptic in the circulation of visual images of blind people signals a participatory beholding, via which blindness is creatively – rather than critically – engaged.

scholarly journals Representations of Hungary and Transylvania in John Paget’s Travelogue

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-98
Author(s):  
Borbála Bökös
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
Travel Guide ◽  
Hungarian Society ◽  
English Culture ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Travel Accounts

Abstract Hungary was an important destination for British travelers in the nineteenth century, whose travel accounts provide intriguing insights into the cultural and political climate of the period. John Paget’s journey was meticulously recorded in his extensive book entitled Hungary and Transylvania (1839) that served as a travel guide for other British visitors after him. Paget, who took part in the 1848/49 War of Independence, and became a “Hungarian,” opened Europe’s eyes to the Hungarian people and their country, destroying several false myths that existed about Hungarians in Western Europe, thus attempting to shape up a more favorable picture about them. The present paper examines a few questions regarding the representation of Hungary and of Transylvania in general in the travelogue: how did Paget describe particular cities and regions, the inhabitants, as well as their everyday life? I will attempt to look at the (changing) images of Hungary and Transylvania in Paget’s writing, as well as to offer an insight into Hungarian society and culture in the nineteenth century as contrasted to English culture and politics.

scholarly journals De esclavos a ciudadanos y malentretenidos. Representaciones del negro en el discurso jurídico colombiano del siglo XIX

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (12) ◽  
pp. 271-302 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martha Isabel Rosas Guevara
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Black People ◽  
Legal Discourse ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Local Elites ◽  
National Community ◽  
Legal Texts ◽  
Siglo Xix

Mediante una narrativa historiográfica elaborada a partir de textos legales, el presente documento pretende interpretar las ausencias y presencias del negro en el discurso jurídico decimonónico producido una vez obtenida la independencia de España en los albores del siglo XIX. Teniendo en cuenta que la imaginación del Estado republicano representó un desafío para las elites criollas, las cuales —pese a predicar retóricamente la consolidación de una comunidad nacional basada en la igualdad y la democracia— construyeron una idea de Nación sobre los basamentos ideológicos coloniales, perpetuados en la repulsión elitista hacia la masa o plebe, lo que a la postre produjo su exclusión de la promisoria modernidad.  From Slaves to Citizens and Vagabonds. Representations of Blackness in the Colombian Legal Discourse during the 19th CenturyAbstractThrough a historiographical narrative drawn from legal texts, this paper aims to interpret the absence and presence of black people in the nineteenth-century legal discourse produced once the independence of Spain was obtained in the early nineteenth century. Considering that the imagination of a State Republican represented a challenge for the local elites, —which despite of  preaching rhetorically the consolidation of a national community based on the equality and the democracy— constructed an idea of Nation on the ideological colonial basements perpetuated in the elitist repulsion towards the mass or populace, which at last produced his exclusion of the promissory modernity.   Keywords: slaves, Independence, citizenship, assimilation, exclusion

The Ottoman Origins of Arab Patriotism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Mestyan
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New Media ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Crimean War ◽  
Local Elites ◽  
New Politics ◽  
Discursive Strategy ◽  
Political Solidarity ◽  
Modern Arabic ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter discusses the Ottoman origins of Arab patriotism. The construction of a new political community as related to a new regime type in Ottoman Egypt can be defined by two problems in the first half of the nineteenth century. The first was the relationship between the Ottoman Empire and its Egyptian province under the rule of Mehmed Ali. The second was the relationship between the governor and the local elites. These problems were interrelated in the legitimacy structure of power, and provided the conditions for the rise of political nation-ness in Arabic. It was the Crimean War, in which Egypt and other Arab provinces participated, that forcefully brought to the surface patriotism in Arabic as a discursive strategy of constituting political solidarity in public. The idea of the homeland became a means to make sense of new politics through old media and new media, such as the modern Arabic theater in Ottoman Beirut.

Walden Pond as Thoreau’s Landscape of Genius

2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 224-250
Author(s):  
Scott Hess
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Spiritual Power ◽  
Lake District ◽  
Natural Landscape ◽  
Central Figure ◽  
Authorial Identity ◽  
English Lake District ◽  
New Form ◽  
Walden Pond

Scott Hess, “Walden Pond as Thoreau’s Landscape of Genius” (pp. 224–250) This essay explores how Henry David Thoreau’s identification with Walden Pond was influenced by the nineteenth-century discourse of the literary landscape and by William Wordsworth’s association with the English Lake District in particular. Wordsworth was a central figure for the transatlantic development of the “landscape of genius”—a new form of literary landscape in which the genius of the author, associated with a specific natural landscape, mediated the spiritual power of nature for individual readers and tourists. Wordsworth’s identification of his authorial identity with the Lake District landscape had a formative influence on both Thoreau’s self-conception and his subsequent reception and canonization, as Thoreau and Walden Pond as his landscape of genius entered the canon together. The essay concludes by exploring the ongoing significance of Thoreau’s association with Walden for both his scholarly and popular reputations, including proliferating discourses of “Thoreau Country”; cultural and political disputes over the Concord and Walden landscapes; and invocations of Thoreau as an ecological hero and inspiration for responses to climate change.

Military Orders in Nineteenth-Century Brazil: Portuguese Tradition, the Holy See, and the Independent Nation

2014 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Camila Borges Da Silva
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
Local Elites ◽  
Holy See ◽  
Pedro I ◽  
Military Orders ◽  
Shed Light

This article is a study of the controversial role of Portuguese military orders in Brazil, starting from that nation’s independence in 1822 and continuing through the nineteenth century, under both the first Emperor of Brazil, Dom Pedro I, and his son, Dom Pedro II. The debates around the presence of the orders, whose mission was rooted in both Portuguese colonial power and the authority of the Holy See, on Brazilian soil are important because they shed light on the process and nature of the growth of that nation’s independence. The government’s struggle to maintain the orders in Brazil, in spite of ongoing criticism, and only with the exertion of great diplomatic effort, demonstrates how necessary they were to the functioning of the state. The orders constituted an important source of income, yes, but they were valuable even more as ways of granting honor and prestige. Their presence allowed Dom Pedro I to unite the empire of Brazil by decorating local elites, thus securing their services and loyalty.

scholarly journals La fotografía como estandarte de la verdad y el progreso: estudio sobre la iconografía fotográfica en la medallística (1880-1920)

2013 ◽  
pp. 123-142
Author(s):  
Jorge L. Crespo Armáiz
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Developmental Stage ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
European Society ◽  
Visual Images ◽  
Profound Change ◽  
Absolute Truth ◽  
Cultural Expressions ◽  
Siglo Xix

Resumen:Desde el momento de su creación a mediados del siglo XIX, la invención fotográfica representó un cambio profundo en la mentalidad de la sociedad decimonónica en lo relativo a su impacto en la reproducción y diseminación de las imágenes visuales. Durante las primeras décadas siguientes a su invención, los entusiastas de la fotografía propulsaron un discurso de superioridad mimética de la misma por sobre las artes visuales tradicionales, sobre la base de la supuesta objetividad absoluta de su registro óptico-químico. La fuerza de esta mentalidad discursiva del nuevo paradigma visual se reflejó en la literatura y demás expresiones culturales, incluyendo las propias artes plásticas. A través de un análisis iconográfico de un conjunto de medallas del período se pueden identificar los signos, códigos y discursos relativos a la fotografía como reflejo de las mentalidades positivistas imperantes de la época.Abstract:Since its invention in the first half of the nineteenth century, photography represented a profound change in the mentality of European society regarding its impact in the reproduction and dissemination of visual images. During its initial developmental stage, fanatics of the new medium gave impulse to a discourse of mimetic superiority of photography over traditional visual arts, based upon the alleged absolute objectivity of its optical-chemical registry. This discursive mentality reflected its influence in literature, as well as in other cultural expressions, including the visual arts. Through the implementation of an iconographic analysis of a sample of award and commemorative medals of this period, this article looks to identify those signs, codes and discourses related to photography as symbol of progress and absolute truth within the positivism paradigm.Keywords: Photography; iconography; medallic art; visual images; mentalities

Choices and constraints: marriage and inheritance in eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century Catalonia

2006 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
JULIE MARFANY
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Considerable Extent ◽  
Economic Factors ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Age At Marriage ◽  
Industrial Community ◽  
Factors Influencing ◽  
Rapid Transformation

This article looks at marriage in Catalonia during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a period of rapid economic and social change, using a case study of a proto-industrial community. Differences in age at marriage are related to data on occupations, wealth and age rank in order to consider as many of the factors influencing marriage decisions as possible. Economic factors were one obvious constraint upon marriage, but another was the particular system of impartible inheritance practised in Catalonia. This article shows that, while inheritance continued to affect marriage choices to a considerable extent, the rapid transformation of the economy was breaking down the traditional constraints upon marriage.

Tunnels in Arcadia: Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Portal Designs for the Great Western Railway

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 ◽  
pp. 143-169
Author(s):  
Hubert Pragnell
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Architectural Heritage ◽  
Railway System ◽  
Classical Style ◽  
Great Western Railway ◽  
University Of Bristol ◽  
Careful Design

AbstractFrom the 1830s, the British landscape was transformed by the development of the steam-hauled railway system, which necessitated bridges, viaducts and tunnels. Of such structures, tunnel entrances feature little in serious studies of railway architecture. However, rich archival evidence exists relating to the designs of Isambard Kingdom Brunel for the tunnel portals on the Great Western Railway between London and Bristol, including numerous pencil and ink drawings in sketchbooks held by the Brunel Archive, University of Bristol, and watercolour elevations in the Network Rail Archive in York, as well as lithographs of the portals by John Cooke Bourne for his History and Description of the Great Western Railway (1846). Brunel's drawings, unique among nineteenth-century engineers, range from the classical style for Box and Middle Hill tunnels in Wiltshire, through the Gothic for Twerton in Somerset, to the Romanesque for Brislington on the edge of Bristol, his so-called ‘Tunnel No. 1’. In their variety and careful design, Brunel's portals represent an important part of Britain's railway and industrial architectural heritage.

scholarly journals De Nederlandse navolging van een Duitse reisgidsenreeks, Was nicht im Baedeker steht : Alternatieve verkenningen van Amsterdam, Rotterdam en Den Haag in Wat niet in Baedeker staat

2021 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-24
Author(s):  
Rob van de Schoor
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
Book Market ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Travel Guide ◽  
System A ◽  
Onderzoek Naar ◽  
The Hague ◽  
Literary System ◽  
Recurrent Theme

Abstract The travel guide series Was nicht im Baedeker steht, published during the interwar period, can be qualified as anti-tourist. The main feature of this critical attitude towards the established Baedekers, which promoted a bourgeois way of travelling, is irony. Zielverfehlung, a deliberate contrariness of what conventional travel guides recommended as the highlights of a journey, is a recurrent theme in the Was nicht im Baedeker steht travel guides. When applied to these guides, Sabine Boomers’ research on nomadic travelling (2004) led us to distinguish four anti-tourist topics: the natural, the futile, the unmentionable and the odd versus the familiar. These topics can also be found in the Dutch imitations of the German series, published as three volumes entitled Wat niet in Baedeker staat. These Dutch guides discuss Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague. The transport of the German anti-tourist concept to the Dutch book-market entailed a transformation that somewhat spoiled the rebellious character of the German travel guides. To fit into the Dutch literary system, a revived version of the early nineteenth-century genre of the ‘physiology’ was adopted by the travel guides of the series Wat niet in Baedeker staat.SamenvattingDe serie reisgidsen die gedurende het Interbellum werd gepubliceerd met de titel Was nicht im Baedeker steht kan antitoeristisch genoemd worden. Het belangrijkste kenmerk van de kritische houding tegenover de alom bekende Baedekers, die een burgerlijke manier van reizen aanbevalen, is ironie. Zielverfehlung, reizen zonder bestemming, een opzettelijke ontkenning van wat in de conventionele reisgidsen werd aangeprezen als de hoogtepunten van een reis, is een terugkerend motief in de reisgidsjes uit de reeks Was nicht im Baedeker steht. Als we Sabine Boomers’ onderzoek naar het nomadische reizen (2004) toepassen op deze gidsen, kunnen we vier antitoeristische thema’s herkennen: het natuurlijke, het onaanzienlijke, het onbespreekbare en de verwevenheid van het vreemde en het vertrouwde. Deze thema’s kunnen ook worden aangetroffen in de Nederlandse navolgingen van de Duitse boekjes, drie delen die verschenen in de reeks Wat niet in Baedeker staat. Het zijn reisgidsjes van Amsterdam, Rotterdam en Den Haag. Het transport van het Duitse antitoeristische concept naar de Nederlandse boekenmarkt zorgde voor een transformatie die afbreuk deed aan het tegendraadse karakter van de Duitse reisgidsen. Om een plaats te verwerven in het Nederlandse literaire systeem grepen de reisgidsen uit de reeks Wat niet in Baedeker staat terug op het vroeg-negentiende-eeuwse genre van de fysiologieën.

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