‘Every expression is watched’: Mind, medical expertise and display in the nineteenth-century English courtroom

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (6) ◽  
pp. 891-918
Author(s):  
John Carson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Professional Knowledge ◽  
The Other ◽  
Truth Telling ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Medical Expertise ◽  
Legal Proceeding ◽  
Scientific Experts ◽  
New Challenges ◽  
The One

The growing presence of medical experts in the English courtroom during the early nineteenth century presented new challenges with regard to how those experts would exert their authority in an adversarial setting. This article examines the ways in which mental science practitioners responded when confronted with the need to testify as to the soundness or unsoundness of mind of an individual in the context of a legal proceeding. It argues that they often engaged in ‘a double act of self-fashioning’. On the one hand, they attempted to fashion their personae into representations of truth-telling beings; on the other hand, they sought to present testimony in such a way that the judge or jury could diagnose the individual’s alleged soundness or unsoundness of mind for themselves, and they sought to do this without leaving any trace of their own efforts. The procedures and presumptions of the English courtroom thus created an epistemic space in which physicians (and other scientific experts) were frequently presented with the puzzle of how to translate determinations arrived at on the basis of often recondite professional knowledge and years of experience into manifestations that could be made visible to a lay audience. Moreover, they had to do this in a setting in which every significant claim was likely to be disputed by adversary counsel and rival experts.

Beyond control: Orientalist tensions and the history of the “upas tree” myth

2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-189
Author(s):  
Tim Hannigan
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Surrounding Atmosphere ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

The “upas tree” is one of the most enduring European myths about Southeast Asia. Accounts of a tree so toxic that it renders the surrounding atmosphere deadly can first be identified in fourteenth-century journey narratives covering what is now Indonesia. But while most other such apocrypha vanished from later European accounts of the region, the upas myth remained prominent and in fact became progressively more elaborate and fantastical, culminating in a notorious hoax: the 1783 account of J. N. Foersch. This article examines the history of the development of the upas myth, and considers the divergent responses to Foersch’s hoax amongst scientists and colonial administrators on the one hand, and poets, playwrights, and artists on the other. In this it reveals a significant tension within the emerging “Orientalist” discourse about Southeast Asia in the early nineteenth century.

From Popular to Esoteric: Nikolaos Mantzaros and the Development of his Career as a Composer

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kostas Kardamis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Status ◽  
The Other ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Greek Poetry ◽  
National Anthem ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Viable Solution ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The One

Nikolaos Halikiopoulos Mantzaros (1795–1872) was a noble from Corfu and is better known today as the composer of the Greek national anthem. However, recent research has proved his importance as a teacher and as one of the most learned composers of his generation, renowned, in Italy and France as well as Greece.The aim of this article is to present Mantzaros’ developing relationship as dilettante composer to the emerging European nineteenth-century music and aesthetics, as featured through his existing works and writings. In his early works (1815–27) Mantzaros demonstrates a remarkable creative assimilation of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century operatic idioms, whereas his aristocratic social status allowed him an eclectic relationship with music in general. From the late 1820s, Mantzaros also began setting Greek poetry to music, in this way offering a viable solution to the demand for ‘national music’.From the mid-1830s onwards, Mantzaros’ already existing interest in Romantic idealism was broadened, affecting his work and thoughts. He stopped composing opera-related works and demonstrated a dual attitude towards music. On the one hand he continued composing popular music for the needs of his social circle, but on the other he developed an esoteric creative relationship with music. The latter led him as early as the 1840s to denounce the ‘extremities of Romanticism’ and to seek the musical expression of the sublime through the creative use of ‘the noble art of counterpoint’. This way he attempted to propose a re-evaluation of nineteenth-century trends through an eclectic neoclassicism, without neglecting the importance of subjective inspiration and genius.

“Supreme Nation”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John T. P. Lai
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
World Order ◽  
The Other ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Reconstruction Process ◽  
Model Image ◽  
The One ◽  
Different Cultures

This chapter explores how Karl F. A. Gützlaff, a leading Protestant missionary to China in the early nineteenth century, consciously created an idealistic image of Great Britain in his novels Shifei lüelun (1835) and Dayingguo tongzhi (1834). Through intentional reinterpretations of two sharply different cultures, Gützlaff challenged the Sinocentric world order on the one hand and presented Britain as the “Supreme Nation” on the other. Moreover, the author reveals that Gützlaff’s narrative of the model image of Britain involved conscious appropriation of certain popular Chinese terms and thinking. The Anglo-Chinese intercourse therefore exhibited a complex destruction–reconstruction process, in which the two-way flow of words and ideas gave shape to one imagined in-between reality.

Between cosmopolitanism and nationhood: Italian opera in the early nineteenth century

Modern Italy ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlotta Sorba
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
International Context ◽  
Delicate Balance ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
The One ◽  
Opera Production ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Romantic Narratives

The revival of interest in music evident in recent historiography has led to an investigation of the specifically transnational nature of musical languages and practices. This article explores the possibility of re-reading in a transnational perspective the classical theme of the relationship between the Risorgimento and opera. It focuses on two different points of view: on the one hand, the construction of the librettos as a delicate balance between European romantic narratives and dramatic themes evoking nationalistic sentiments; on the other, the fact that ideas and practices of the theatre as a vehicle of political mobilisation developed in a broad international context where Mazzini and many other nationalists found inspiration in multinational political experiences and discourses. The article concludes by saying that the meanings of terms such as cosmopolitanism and nationalism need to be carefully weighed when we look at nineteenth-century opera production. Only in the closing decades of the century did genuine competition between national traditions arise, which led in Italy to a veritable ‘obsession’ with ‘Italianness’ in music.

scholarly journals The Politics of Time

2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theo Jung
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Language Use ◽  
The Other ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Pragmatic Analysis ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

This article traces the uses of zeitgeist in early nineteenth-century European political discourse. To explain the concept's explosive takeoff in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, two perspectives are combined. On the one hand, the concept is shown to be a key element in the new, “temporalized” discourses of cultural reflection emerging during this time. On the other, its pragmatic value as a linguistic tool in concrete political constellations is outlined on the basis of case studies from French, British, and German political discourse. Developing this two-sided perspective, the article sheds light on an important aspect of early nineteenth-century political discourse while also pointing to some general considerations concerning the relationship between the semantic and pragmatic analysis of historical language use.

scholarly journals Domesticating the Child: Maternal Responses to Hereditary Discourse in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Pellerito
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Biological Traits ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Traditional Gender Roles ◽  
Alternate Version ◽  
The One ◽  
Maternal Responses ◽  
The Temple ◽  
Erasmus Darwin

This article examines the early nineteenth century connections between human, animal and plant by placing Erasmus Darwin’s The Botanic Garden (1791) and The Temple of Nature (1803) in conversation with Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848). I argue that the Romantic versions of heredity described in Darwin’s poetry tended to reinscribe traditional gender roles. Brontë’s Tenant, on the other hand, revises earlier notions of heredity and motherhood via Helen Huntingdon, the wife of an alcoholic who tries to prevent her son from activating his genetic taint. By reconfiguring the supposedly natural connections between patriarchal inheritance of the land on the one hand and biological traits on the other, and by reclaiming and reinscribing popular metaphors of breeding, Anne Brontë’s female protagonist creates and attempts to implement a maternalist version of heredity while remaining entrenched within the nineteenth-century cult of motherhood. Whereas the Romantic and romanticized poetry of Erasmus Darwin and his contemporaries’ approach to natural history bestowed human characteristics on plants in order to make their reproduction more comprehensible, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall does the opposite. Without a satisfactory framework in place to express the anxieties surrounding human heredity, Brontë turns the tables on the metaphor and applies the language of breeding and agriculture to a human child. In doing so, she creates an alternate version of heredity based on maternal strength and power rather than one predicated upon patriarchal structures of kinship and economic inheritance.

The One-Drop Rule in Reverse? Interracial Marriages in Napoleonic and Restoration France

2009 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 515-548 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Heuer
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
French Army ◽  
French Government ◽  
Interracial Marriages ◽  
Blacks And Whites ◽  
The One ◽  
Ministerial Decree

In the early nineteenth century, an obscure rural policeman petitioned the French government with an unusual story. Charles Fanaye had served with Napoleon's armies in Egypt. Chased by Mameluks, he was rescued in the nick of time by a black Ethiopian woman and hidden in her home. Threatened in turn by the Mameluks, Marie-Hélène (as the woman came to be called) threw in her lot with the French army and followed Fanaye to France. The couple then sought to wed. They easily overcame religious barriers when Marie-Héléne was baptized in the Cathedral of Avignon. But another obstacle was harder to overcome: an 1803 ministerial decree banned marriage between blacks and whites. Though Fanaye and Marie-Héléne begged for an exception, the decree would plague them for the next sixteen years of their romance.

scholarly journals AN IMPERIAL APOSTLE? ST PAUL, PROTESTANT CONVERSION, AND SOUTH ASIAN CHRISTIANITY

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-130
Author(s):  
SHINJINI DAS
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Reference Point ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
British Imperialism ◽  
Intellectual Engagement ◽  
Imperial Ideology ◽  
The One ◽  
The Ideal

AbstractThis article explores the locally specific (re)construction of a biblical figure, the Apostle St Paul, in India, to unravel the entanglement of religion with British imperial ideology on the one hand, and to understand the dynamics of colonial conversion on the other. Over the nineteenth century, evangelical pamphlets and periodicals heralded St Paul as the ideal missionary, who championed conversion to Christianity but within an imperial context: that of the first-century Roman Mediterranean. Through an examination of missionary discourses, along with a study of Indian (Hindu and Islamic) intellectual engagement with Christianity including Bengali convert narratives, this article studies St Paul as a reference point for understanding the contours of ‘vernacular Christianity’ in nineteenth-century India. Drawing upon colonial Christian publications mainly from Bengal, the article focuses on the multiple reconfigurations of Paul: as a crucial mascot of Anglican Protestantism, as a justification of British imperialism, as an ideological resource for anti-imperial sentiments, and as a theological inspiration for Hindu reform and revivalist organization.

scholarly journals Dynamics of Continuity and Change: Shifts in Labour Relations in the Potosí Mines (1680–1812)

2016 ◽  
Vol 61 (S24) ◽  
pp. 93-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rossana Barragán Romano
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Economic Sectors ◽  
Labour Relations ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
The One

AbstractLabour relations in the silver mines of Potosí are almost synonymous with the mita, a system of unfree work that lasted from the end of the sixteenth century until the beginning of the nineteenth century. However, behind this continuity there were important changes, but also other forms of work, both free and self-employed. The analysis here is focused on how the “polity” contributed to shape labour relations, especially from the end of the seventeenth century and throughout the eighteenth century. This article scrutinizes the labour policies of the Spanish monarchy on the one hand, which favoured certain economic sectors and regions to ensure revenue, and on the other the initiatives both of mine entrepreneurs and workers – unfree, free, and self-employed – who all contributed to changing the system of labour.

Travel Writing/Writing Travel to Report: Matthew Flinders to Evan Nepean from Coepang Bay Timor

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Polina Shvanyukova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Travel Writing ◽  
Travel Literature ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Professional Status ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The One ◽  
Textual Strategies

Texts authored by maritime explorers occupy a special place in the body of travel literature in English dealing with the exploration of the Pacific in the modern period. This article focuses on a specimen of scientific travel writing in epistolary form authored by Commander Matthew Flinders, the officer under whose command HMS Investigator completed the first circumnavigation of Australia in 1803. I analyse Matthew Flinders’s official despatch to Evan Nepean, Secretary of the Admiralty at the time, as an example of early nineteenth-century epistolary travel writing, paying special attention to the textual strategies employed by Flinders in order to produce a coherent and accurate travel account, on the one hand, and to negotiate his professional status and persona with his interlocutor(s), on the other.

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