Itch, Clap, Pox

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noelle Gallagher
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
British Literature ◽  
Venereal Disease ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Anxieties ◽  
Eighteenth Century Britain ◽  
History Of Literature

In eighteenth-century Britain, venereal disease was everywhere and nowhere: while physicians and commentators believed the condition to be widespread, it remained shrouded in secrecy, and was often represented using slang, symbolism, and wordplay. This book explores the cultural significance of the “clap” (gonorrhea), the “pox” (syphilis), and the “itch” (genital scabies) for the development of eighteenth-century British literature and art. As a condition both represented through metaphors and used as a metaphor, venereal disease provided a vehicle for the discussion of cultural anxieties about gender, race, commerce, and immigration. The book highlights four key concepts associated with venereal disease, demonstrating how infection's symbolic potency was enhanced by its links to elite masculinity, prostitution, foreignness, and facial deformities. Casting light where the sun rarely shines, this study will fascinate anyone interested in the history of literature, art, medicine, and sexuality.

James Bradley and the eighteenth Century 'Gap' in attempts to measure annual stellar parallax

1982 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-100 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Annual Cycle ◽  
Important Implication ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Absolute Measurement ◽  
Great Accuracy ◽  
Precision Measurements ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Wrong Direction ◽  
History Of

When, in 1728, James Bradley wrote to Edmund Halley of his ‘new discovered motion of the fixed stars’ (1) Bradley pointed out an important implication of his work for the problem of the detection of the annual parallax of the stars. In conclusion he wrote thus (2): I believe I may venture to say, that in either of the two stars last mentioned [the annual parallax] does not amount to 2". I am of opinion, that if it were 1". I should have perceived it in the great number of observations that I made, especially upon y Draconis; which agreeing with the hypothesis . . . nearly as well when the sun was in conjunction with, as in opposition to, this star, it seems very probable, that the parallax of it is not so great as one single second. This statement has been cited by historians as a decisive turning point in the history of attempts to measure parallax: a turning point in the wrong direction, however, as after this, it is claimed, astronomers no longer sought parallax measurements, believing such small angles to be beyond the limits of even the most sensitive instruments. According to M. A. Hoskin (3): Not surprisingly, Bradley’s revelation of the most incredible delicacy of the required measurements . . . and the apparent near impossibility of maintaining such accuracy over an annual cycle, resulted in a failure of nerve among those few astonomers who possessed instruments capable of precision measurements. And the Canadian astronomer J. D. Fernie suggests that (4): The great accuracy of Bradley’s observations and their failure to detect any star’s parallax seem to have put something of a damper on further attempts at direct absolute measurement for the remainder of the eighteenth century.

Slavery and the Making of Early American Libraries

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean D. Moore
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
British Literature ◽  
History Of The Book ◽  
British Identity ◽  
Atlantic Studies ◽  
Early American ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
History Of

Early American libraries stood at the nexus of two transatlantic branches of commerce—the book trade and the slave trade. Slavery and the Making of Early American Libraries bridges the study of these trades by demonstrating how Americans’ profits from slavery were reinvested in imported British books and providing evidence that the colonial book market was shaped, in part, by the demand of slave owners for metropolitan cultural capital. It makes these claims on the basis of recent scholarship on how participation in London cultural life was very expensive in the eighteenth century, and evidence that enslavers were therefore some of the few early Americans who could afford importing British cultural products. In doing so, this work merges the fields of the history of the book, Atlantic studies, and the study of race, arguing that the empire-wide circulation of British books was underwritten by the labor of the African diaspora. This book, accordingly, is the first in early American and eighteenth-century British studies to fuse our growing understanding of the material culture of the transatlantic text with our awareness of slavery as an economic and philanthropic basis for the production and consumption of knowledge. In studying the American dissemination of works of British literature and political thought, this book claims that Americans were seeking out the forms of citizenship, constitutional traditions, and rights that were the signature of that British identity. Even though they were purchasing the sovereignty of Anglo-Americans at the expense of African-Americans through these books, however, some colonials were also making the case for the abolition of slavery.

TALL HISTORIES: HEIGHT AND GEORGIAN MASCULINITIES

2016 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 79-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew McCormack
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Human Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Health And Nutrition ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

ABSTRACTHeight is rarely taken seriously by historians. Demographic and archaeological studies tend to explore height as a symptom of health and nutrition, rather than in its own right, and cultural studies of the human body barely study it at all. Its absence from the history of gender is surprising, given that it has historically been discussed within a highly gendered moral language. This paper therefore explores height through the lens of masculinity and focuses on the eighteenth century, when height took on a peculiar cultural significance in Britain. On the one hand, height could be associated with social status, political power and ‘polite’ refinement. On the other, it could connote ambition, militarism, despotism, foreignness and even castration. The article explores these themes through a case-study of John Montagu, earl of Sandwich, who was famously tall and was frequently caricatured as such. As well as exploring representations of the body, the paper also considers corporeal experiences and biometric realities of male height. It argues that histories of masculinity should study both representations of gender and their physical manifestations.

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