The plastic of clothing and the construction of visual communication and interaction: a semiotic examination of the eighteenth-century French dress

Semiotica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marilia Jardim
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Visual Communication ◽  
Social Roles ◽  
The Body ◽  
Thematic Role ◽  
Visual Semiotics ◽  
Original Case ◽  
Visual Relations

Abstract The article presents an account of the visual relations created by garments through their plastic formants, examining the role played by form, material, and composition in creating body hierarchies that produce prescribed behaviors between different subjects. The work dissects the concept of thematic role from the Greimasian theory, investigating the manners in which an eighteenth-century wedding dress presents the chaining of programs governing materials, garments, and the body in the production of narrative interactions between subjects. The work utilizes a combination of Greimas’ method with the Visual Semiotics continued by Floch and Oliveira, as well as Hammad’s Semiotics of Space which permit the exam of optical relations created in the body through its clothing – relations that can be read both as manifesting values that are historically and socially determined, or in the act of apprehension of an object. The eighteenth century provides a type of “original” case, whose results are pertinent to a broader study of the relations between body and dress: the work concludes with the understanding that Fashion changes through the transit of values and roles invested in the body and dress – a set of changes closely linked to the construction of social roles.

Locating the Historical and Contemporary Context of Women’s Imprisonment

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anastasia Chamberlen
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Historical Account ◽  
Women’S Experiences ◽  
Contemporary Research ◽  
Women's Experiences ◽  
Women's Prisons ◽  
Women's Imprisonment ◽  
Contemporary Context

This chapter sketches the broader context of the study presented in this book. It starts with a historical account of imprisonment, focusing particularly on women’s imprisonment, and attempts to trace the centrality of prisoner bodies in the delivery of punishment via the prison since the eighteenth century. Through this brief historiography, it examines how the body has been the object and subject of punishment and, since the start, has been part and parcel of the delivery of imprisonment. More specifically, the chapter argues that, since its establishment, women’s imprisonment has been gendered and embodied. The second half of the chapter looks at more contemporary research on women’s experiences in prison, and unpacks the punishment–body relation by connecting the study’s objectives to extant research on women’s prisons.

Maiden Voyage

Nuncius ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-49
Author(s):  
Dario De Santis
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Microscopic Investigation ◽  
The Body ◽  
Natural Phenomena ◽  
Scientific Debate

AbstractThe scientific debate which developed during the eighteenth century, proposed and diffused new theories on the generation not only within the scientific community. Microscopic investigation and various experimental campaigns fostered daring models attempting to unveil the natural phenomena from which life originates. Besides the famous scientific and philosophical works that marked the age, in the second part of the century two pamphlets appeared that well represent the importance of the querelle about embryological systems defining the concept of generation as a voyage within the human body. Lucina sine concubitu and Juno abortans, respectively published in England and in Germany between 1750 and 1760, narrate the odd and imaginary adventures of two doctors who are trying to interrupt and modify the embryos' journey towards the body of the mother.

On the Authoritativeness of Sunni Consensus

1986 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 427-454 ◽  
Author(s):  
Weal B. Hallaq
Keyword(s):  
Legal Reasoning ◽  
Great Majority ◽  
The Body ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Legal Process ◽  
Mental Faculty ◽  
Original Case ◽  
Consensus Functions ◽  
Legal Judgments ◽  
Substantive Law

Sunni Islam recognizes four sources from and through which the laws governing its conduct are derived. These are the Qur'an, the Sunna of the Prophet, the consensus (ljmā') of the community and its scholars, and qiyās, the juridicological method of inference. The first two sources provide the jurist with the material from which he is to extract through qiyas and ijtihād (the disciplined exercise of mental faculty) the law which he believes to the best of his knowledge to be that decreed by God. Except for a relatively limited number of cases where the Qu'an and the Sunna offer already-formulated legal judgments, the great majority of furū' cases, which constitute the body of positive and substantive law, are derived by qiyas. Thus, qiyas may be used to “discover” the judgment of a new case provided that this case has not already been solved in the two primary sources. The process of legal reasoning which qiyas involves is charged with innumerable difficulties not the least of which is finding the circle of common similarity, the 'illa, between the original case in the texts and the new case which requires a legal judgment. Since finding the 'illa entails a certain amount of guesswork (zann) on the part of the jurist and since it is highly probable that the 'illa is extracted from a text which is not entirely reliable or a text capable of more than one interpretation, Sunni jurists deemed the results of qiyas to be probable (zannī). It is only at this point that consensus may enter into play in the legal process. Should Muslims, represented by their jurists, reach an agreement on the validity of a zanni legal judgment, such judgment is automatically transferred from the domain of juristic speculation to that of certainty (qat', yaqīn). Consensus then renders this judgment irrevocable, not to be challenged or reinterpreted by later generations. Furthermore, this judgment, being so irrevocable, acquires a validity tantamount to that of the Qur'an and the highly reliable traditions embodied in the Sunna of the Prophet. Thus, such a case with its established judgment becomes a precedent according to which another new legal question may be solved. It is only in this sense that consensus functions as a source of law, a source which is infallible.

‘Tales of Wonder and Horror’: Coverage of insanity in the Leeds press, 1808-1840

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Evgeniya Kryssova
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
The Body ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Press Coverage ◽  
Social Analysis ◽  
Periodical Literature ◽  
Legal Cases ◽  
The North ◽  
The Press

<p>The press was at the centre of the reform of the meaning of insanity, during its evolution from an equivocal eighteenth-century concept of melancholia to a medicalised Victorian notion of ‘lunacy’. During the late Georgian era newspapers provided a public forum for the opinion of newly emerging psychiatric practitioners and fostered the fears and concerns about mental illness and its supposed increase. The press was also the main source of news on crime, providing readers with reports on criminal insanity and suicide. In the first half of the nineteenth century, newspaper contents included official legal reports, as well as editorial commentary and excerpts from other publications, and newspaper articles can rarely be traced to one single author. Historians of British insanity avoid consulting periodical literature, choosing to use asylum records and coroners’ reports, as these sources are more straightforward than newspapers. However, Rab Houston’s recent study of the coverage of suicide in the north of Britain shows that the provincial press has been unjustly overlooked and can offer the material for a unique social analysis. Asylum records and coroners’ records do not contain the same detail provided in the press. Newspaper commentary can arguably reveal contemporary attitudes towards insanity and, moreover, sources such as asylum records only deal with the lower-class patients, as the middle- and upper-class insane were usually privately detained.  This thesis examines the press coverage of insanity in Leeds newspapers, and expands on previous research by looking at the way insanity was portrayed in the two most popular publications in the industrial region of Yorkshire: the Leeds Intelligencer and the Leeds Mercury. Chapter one focuses on legal cases that featured a verdict of insanity and explores the language used by the press in the reports of, mainly, violent domestic crime. Chapter two looks at reports of suicide and considers how contemporary views on financial and moral despondency influenced the portrayal of self-murder. Chapter three considers editorial articles that cannot be described as either crime or suicide reports. This chapter uncovers the presence of surprisingly humorous and entertaining articles on insanity found in editorials and the ‘Miscellany’ sections of the newspapers. Ultimately, this thesis argues that the reportage of insanity in the Leeds press was sensational, moralistic and selectively sympathetic; furthermore, such portrayal of insanity was reinforced throughout the body of the paper. Leeds newspapers segregated the insane by adopting a moralising tone and by choosing to use class-specific language towards the insane of different social ranks.</p>

scholarly journals From the organism of a body to the body of an organism: occurrence and meaning of the word ‘organism’ from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries

2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 319-339 ◽  
Author(s):  
TOBIAS CHEUNG
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Technical Term ◽  
Latin Word ◽  
Entire World

This paper retraces the occurrence of the word ‘organism’ in writings of different authors from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. It seeks to clarify chronological and conceptual shifts in the usage and meaning of the word. After earlier uses of the word in medieval sources, the Latin word organismus appeared in 1684 in Stahl's medico-physiological writings. Around 1700 it can be found in French (organisme), English (organism), Italian (organismo) and later also in German (Organismus). During the eighteenth century the word ‘organism’ generally referred to a specific principle or form of order that could be applied to plants, animals or the entire world. At the end of the eighteenth century the term became a generic name for individual living entities. From around 1830 the word ‘organism’ replaced the expressions ‘organic’ or ‘organized body’ as a recurrent technical term in the emerging biological disciplines.

Music in the Body

2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-106
Author(s):  
Alison Stevens
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Movement Patterns ◽  
Art Music ◽  
The Body ◽  
Unique Contribution ◽  
Musical Styles

Abstract Dance in general and the contredanse in particular have long been recognized as important to eighteenth-century European music. But music theorists have tended to understate the contredanse's unique contribution, when they haven't overlooked it entirely: dances are more often treated as musical styles or topics than as movement patterns, and the minuet, with more explicit connections to art music, has received more attention than the contredanse. This article analyzes the choreography as well as the music of eighteenth-century contredanses to show how this dance supported the development of hypermetrical hearing. The contredanse had surpassed the minuet in popularity by the second half of the eighteenth century, probably in part because of its participatory rather than performative nature. More important, it was the first dance in which alignment of choreography and music consistently extended to multiple hypermetric levels. In addressing the importance of contredanse choreography to eighteenth-century hypermeter, this article makes a broader appeal for incorporation of dance and the body into the study of meter.

Images of the Female Body in Émile Zola's Novels

2021 ◽  
pp. 301-317
Author(s):  
Irina David
Keyword(s):  
Female Body ◽  
Social Roles ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
The Body ◽  
French Society ◽  
Social Construct ◽  
The Social ◽  
Women's Role ◽  
And Behavior

The aim of this chapter is to highlight how the female body and the social practices that it is subject to are depicted in Émile Zola's literary work as indicators of dominating perceptions in 19th century patriarchal French society with regard to social roles in general and women's role in society in particular. Rather than focusing on an anatomic, biological analysis of the body, the discussion will turn to the body as a social construct, as metaphor for the overall treatment of women as beings whose appearance and behavior have to constantly be regulated for them to no longer constitute a threat to the male-centric society they live in.

Cofradía and Cabildo in the Eighteenth Century

2019 ◽  
pp. 101-123
Author(s):  
S. Elizabeth Penry
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
System A ◽  
The Town

By the eighteenth century, the town-based cofradía and cabildo offices had merged to form what scholars call the fiesta-cargo system, a series of linked posts that created affective ties to the town and legitimated authority within it. Andeans now defined themselves as comuneros, members of the común, the body of commoners that excluded caciques. To become a leader of the común, one served the saints by holding cofradía office. Comuneros had made cofradías and saints Andean: service to the saints rotated among the town’s ayllus and saints’ celebrations included llama sacrifice, pouring libations, and shamanistic practices. During their time as officeholders, comuneros were exempt from tribute and mita, making them a de facto nobility. Caciques saw these officeholders as threats to cacical rule and worked to undercut them. That fear coincided with Spanish policies that also sought to reduce cofradía officers so as to increase tribute payments and mita labor.

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