scholarly journals Tough, Rugged, and Evolving Masculinity: Harry Compton, an Enslaved and Free Black Man in Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century New Jersey

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-144
Author(s):  
Kenneth E. Marshall
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New Jersey ◽  
Black Masculinity ◽  
Public Performance ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Gender Culture ◽  
Free Black ◽  
The World ◽  
Self Worth ◽  
The Face

This article explores the little known yet intriguing life of Harry Compton (c. 1743–c. 1814), who first comes to our attention in the 1883 narrative of the life of his famed granddaughter, Silvia Dubois. An enslaved person turned independent businessman, Compton constructed a complex and evolving concept of masculinity in the face of oppression, encouraging us to understand black masculinity in slavery and freedom as a life-long pursuit of self-empowerment and personal reinvention. His story, which occurred mostly in rural New Jersey, adds nuance to scholars’ understanding of early black masculinity as a public performance that showcased one’s power and authority, or self-worth, while also providing an important example of black masculinity as a developing process. In telling Compton’s story, the article advances a number of narrative threads pertaining to eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century New Jersey, including slavery, gender, culture and economy, and the law. An analysis of Compton allows the reader to learn a great deal about the world in which he lived and, ultimately, overcame through his dynamic masculinity performed in various public settings.

‘Otherwise in London’ or, the ‘Essence of Things’: Modernity and Estrangement in the Nineteenth-Century Cityscape

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-35
Author(s):  
Julian Wolfreys
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
William Wordsworth ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Thomas De Quincey ◽  
Urban Centre ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Urban Representation ◽  
Robert Southey ◽  
The World ◽  
The City

Writers of the early nineteenth century sought to find new ways of writing about the urban landscape when first confronted with the phenomena of London. The very nature of London's rapid growth, its unprecedented scale, and its mere difference from any other urban centre throughout the world marked it out as demanding a different register in prose and poetry. The condition of writing the city, of inventing a new writing for a new experience is explored by familiar texts of urban representation such as by Thomas De Quincey and William Wordsworth, as well as through less widely read authors such as Sarah Green, Pierce Egan, and Robert Southey, particularly his fictional Letters from England.

The National and the Universal

2020 ◽  
pp. 368-386
Author(s):  
Sarah Collins
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Johann Gottfried Herder ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
The World ◽  
Respective Treatment ◽  
History Of

This chapter examines the continuities between the categories of the “national” and the “universal” in the nineteenth century. It construes these categories as interrelated efforts to create a “world” on various scales. The chapter explores the perceived role of music as a world-making medium within these discourses. It argues that the increased exposure to cultural difference and the interpretation of that cultural difference as distant in time and space shaped a conception of “humanity” in terms of a universal history of world cultures. The chapter reexamines those early nineteenth-century thinkers whose work became inextricably linked with the rise of exclusivist notions of nationalism in the late nineteenth century, such as Johann Gottfried Herder and John Stuart Mill. It draws from their respective treatment of music to recover their early commitment to universalizable principles and their view that the “world” is something that must be actively created rather than empirically observed.

Literary Experimentation in Rowland Hill's Village Dialogues: Transcending "Critical Attitudes" in the Face of Societal Ruination

2011 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
Adrian J. Wallbank
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
British Society ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Concerted Effort ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Class Culture ◽  
The Face ◽  
Literary Techniques

Adrian J. Wallbank, "Literary Experimentation in Rowland Hill's Village Dialogues: Transcending 'Critical Attitudes' in the Face of Societal Ruination" (pp. 1–36) In the aftermath of the French "Revolution Controversy," middle-class evangelical writers made a concerted effort to rehabilitate the moral fabric of British society. Hannah More's Cheap Repository Tracts (1795–98) are recognized as pivotal within this program, but in this essay I question whether they were really as influential as has been supposed. I argue that autobiographical evidence from the period demonstrates an increasing skepticism toward overt didacticism, and that despite their significant and undeniable penetration within working-class culture, the Cheap Repository Tracts, if not all "received ideologies," were increasingly being rejected by their readers. This essay examines the important contribution that Rowland Hill's Village Dialogues (1801) made to this arena. Hill, like many of his contemporaries, felt that British society was facing ruination, but he also recognized that overt moralizing and didacticism was no longer palatable or effective. I argue that Hill thus experimented with an array of literary techniques—many of which closely intersect with developments occurring within the novel and sometimes appear to contradict or undermine the avowed seriousness of evangelicalism—that not only attempt to circumvent what Jonathan Rose has described as the "critical attitudes" of early-nineteenth-century readers, but also effectively map the "transitional" nature of the shifting literary and social terrains of the period. In so doing, Hill contributed signally to the evolution of the dialogue form (which is often synonymous with mentoring and didacticism), since his use of conversational mimesis and satire predated the colloquialism of John Wilson's Noctes Ambrosianae (1822–35) and Walter Savage Landor's Imaginary Conversations (1824–29).

scholarly journals Chief of this River

2019 ◽  
Vol 111 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-35
Author(s):  
Rick Fehr ◽  
Janet Macbeth ◽  
Summer Sands Macbeth
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
War Of 1812 ◽  
Community Life ◽  
Upper Canada ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Indigenous History ◽  
European Settlement ◽  
Primary Documents ◽  
The Face

The narratives of European settlement in Canada have largely excluded the presence of Indigenous peoples on contested lands. This article offers an exploration of an Anishinaabeg community and a regional chief in early nineteenth century Upper Canada. The community known as the Chenail Ecarté land, and Chief Zhaawni-binesi, have become historically obscure. Through the use of primary documents the authors explore the community’s history, its relocation, and Chief Zhaawni-binesi’s role in the War of 1812 and in community life. Ultimately, the paper charts the relocation of the community in the face of mounting settler encroachment. The discussion attempts to increase knowledge and appreciation of Indigenous history in Southwestern Ontario.

The Unknown Reviewer of Christ Abel: Jeffrey, Hazlitt, Tom Moore

PMLA ◽  
1955 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 417-432
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Schneider
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
The World ◽  
Edinburgh Review

Among the reviews of poetry in the early nineteenth century few have been more celebrated, or more notorious, than the review of Coleridge's Christabel which appeared in the Edinburgh Review for September 1816. The Quarterly on Keats, Mr. Blackwood's young men on the Cockney School, Jeffrey's “This will never do” of the Excursion, and the Edinburgh Review's indirect and unwitting gift to the world of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers—perhaps only these have had greater fame, of sorts. The destroyers of new poets may have had an inkling of the vengeance of posterity, for the authorship of some of these reviews was a mystery exceptionally well preserved even for that age of anonymous criticism. Time, however, and amateur detectives have succeeded in fixing the responsibility for most of them; the review of Christabel is the chief remaining puzzle.

scholarly journals The Campaign for Representative Government in Newfoundland

2006 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerry Bannister
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Representative Government ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
Parliamentary Debates ◽  
Limited Success ◽  
The Face

Abstract This paper examines the campaign for an elected assembly in Newfoundland, granted in 1832, and challenges established views of the Colony's reform movement. In the early nineteenth century reformers repeatedly appealed for a local legislature, but their efforts met with limited success in the face of opposition from both merchants and government officials. However, fuelled by concerns over taxation, the reform movement transformed in 1828 into a viable coalition for representative government. In London the reformers overcame the government's intransigence through a strategy designed to gain support in Parliament and to undermine the Colonial Office. An analysis of the rhetoric employed in local meetings and petitions, as well as in Parliamentary debates, suggests that an assertive press and an inclusive public discourse played crucial roles in the reform movement's ability to embrace disparate socio-economic interests.

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