From the Library to the Printing Press: Luigi Vanvitelli's Life with Books

2010 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 508-533 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin L. Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Printing Press ◽  
Architectural Practice ◽  
Its Analysis ◽  
The Way

Analyzing the letters of architect Luigi Vanvitelli (1700––1773), Robin L. Thomas reconstructs his library and explores his prolific reading. From the Library to the Printing Press: Luigi Vanvitelli's Life with Books demonstrates how Vanvitelli's books influenced his architectural practice and, conversely, how his opinions and tastes conditioned the ways he read. Literary ideas of decorum explain the stylistic heterogeneity of his architectural oeuvre and influenced the way he wrote. His Dichiarazione dei disegni del Reale Palazzo di Caserta (1756), documenting the magnificent palace he designed for King Charles Bourbon, is among the most lavish books of its time. Its analysis illuminates how the architect interacted with the printed page and how books influenced architecture in the eighteenth century.

John Ray, physico-theology and afterwards

2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 328-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. J. Berry
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Intelligent Design ◽  
Trinity College ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
John Ray ◽  
The Way

Ray's most widely read book was his Wisdom of God manifested in the works of creation (1691), probably based on addresses given in the chapel of Trinity College Cambridge 20 years previously. In it he forswore the use of allegory in biblical interpretation, just as he had done in his (and Francis Willughby's) Ornithology (1678). His discipline seeped into theology, complementing the influence of the Reformers and weakening Enlightenment assumptions about teleology, thus softening the hammer-blows of Darwinism on Deism. The physico-theology of the eighteenth century and the popularity of Gilbert White and the like survived the squeezing of natural theology by Paley and the Bridgewater Treatises a century after Wisdom … , and contributed to a peculiarly British understanding of natural theology. This undergirded the subsequent impact of the results of the voyagers and geologists and prepared the way for a modern reading of God's “Book of Works” (“Darwinism … under the disguise of a foe, did the work of a friend”). Natural theology is often assumed to have been completely discredited by Darwin (as well as condemned by Barth and ridiculed by Dawkins). Notwithstanding, and despite the vapours of vitalism (ironically urged – among others – by Ray's biographer, Charles Raven) and the current fashion for “intelligent design”, the attitudes encouraged by Wisdom … still seem to be robust, albeit needing constant re-tuning (as in all understandings influenced by science).

Maclaurin on Occasionalism: A Reply to Ablondi

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-135
Author(s):  
Patrick J. Connolly
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Recent Article ◽  
Gravitational Attraction ◽  
Matter Theory ◽  
Key Features ◽  
Short Essay ◽  
The Way

In a recent article Fred Ablondi compares the different approaches to occasionalism put forward by two eighteenth-century Newtonians, Colin Maclaurin and Andrew Baxter. The goal of this short essay is to respond to Ablondi by clarifying some key features of Maclaurin's views on occasionalism and the cause of gravitational attraction. In particular, I explore Maclaurin's matter theory, his views on the explanatory limits of mechanism, and his appeals to the authority of Newton. This leads to a clearer picture of the way in which Maclaurin understood gravitational attraction and the workings of nature.

Scots and Access to Spanish America from Before the Union to 1748

2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Lenman
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Political Life ◽  
British State ◽  
Scottish Politics ◽  
Partial Integration ◽  
The Way

This article begins with the idea that there was a vigorous political life in Scotland in the first half of the eighteenth century which could focus on issues other than Jacobitism or government patronage. The article focuses on the non-dynastic issues in Scottish politics that predated the Union and which carried on into the Westminster parliament to the accompaniment of considerable activism in Scotland, and a distinctive contribution from Scottish members of both houses of the legislature. The example here examined is the burning issue of securing commercial access to the forbidden lands of Spanish America. Studying it reveals very clearly that ‘The theme of Scotland's partial integration into the British state’ and the way in which it ‘was never wholly successful’, goes back to the very start of the eighteenth century.

Haydn, meter, and listening in transition

2010 ◽  
Vol 51 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 141-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Grant
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Recent Trend ◽  
Music And Literature ◽  
Late Works ◽  
The Way

In recent years, music theorists and analysts have devoted a great deal of attention to the phenomenon of hypermeter, drawing some of their most representative examples from the late works of Haydn. Although this recent trend in analysis has shed much light on Haydn’s music, it has left questions of history distinct from the mode of listening it engages. This article argues that the way we understand conceptualizations of listening and aesthetic experience can greatly inform the way that we understand hypermeter and the question of style in history. Drawing on eighteenth-century theories of music and literature, it recontextualizes Haydn’s hypermetric style with respect to a larger world of aesthetic experience.

Drezno w relacjach polskich osiemnastowiecznych peregrynantów. Rekonesans .

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 26-43
Author(s):  
Marcin Pliszka
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Life ◽  
The City ◽  
The Way

The article analyses descriptions, memories, and notes on Dresden found in eighteenth-century accounts of Polish travellers. The overarching research objective is to capture the specificity of the way of presenting the city. The ways that Dresden is described are determined by genological diversity of texts, different ways of narration, the use of rhetorical repertoire, and the time of their creation. There are two dominant ways of presenting the city: the first one foregrounds the architectural and historical values, the second one revolves around social life and various kinds of games (redoubts, performances).

Gospels before the Book

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew D. C. Larsen
Keyword(s):  
Fluid Collection ◽  
Printing Press ◽  
Methodological Framework ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Textual Tradition ◽  
Textual Culture ◽  
Early Christian Studies ◽  
The Way

What does it mean to read the gospels “before the book”? For centuries, the way people have talked about the gospels has been shaped by ideas that have more to do with the printing press and modern notions of the author than they do with ancient writing and reading practices. Gospels Before the Book challenges several subtle yet problematic assumptions about authors, books, and publication at work in early Christian studies. The author explores a host of underappreciated elements of ancient textual culture, such as unfinished texts, accidental publication, postpublication revision, and multiple authorized versions of the same work. Turning to the gospels, he argues the earliest readers and users of the text we now call the Gospel according to Mark treated it not as a book published by an author but as an unfinished, open, and fluid collection of notes (hypomnēmata). The Gospel according to Matthew, then, would not be regarded as a separate book published by a different author but, rather, as a continuation of the same unfinished gospel tradition. Similarly, it is not the case that, of the five different endings in the textual tradition, one is “right” and the others are “wrong.” Rather, each ending represents its own effort to fill in what some perceived to be lacking in the Gospel according to Mark. The text of the Gospel according to Mark is better understood when approached as unfinished notes than as a book published by an author. Larsen also offers a new methodological framework for future scholarship on early Christian gospels.

Between History and Nature

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anik Waldow
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
Scientific Models ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Hermeneutic Philosophy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
The Way

From within the philosophy of history and history of science alike, attention has been paid to Herder’s naturalist commitment and especially to the way in which his interest in medicine, anatomy, and biology facilitates philosophically significant notions of force, organism, and life. As such, Herder’s contribution is taken to be part of a wider eighteenth-century effort to move beyond Newtonian mechanism and the scientific models to which it gives rise. In this scholarship, Herder’s hermeneutic philosophy—as it grows out of his engagement with poetry, drama, and both literary translation and literary documentation projects—has received less attention. Taking as its point of departure Herder’s early work, this chapter proposes that, in his work on literature, Herder formulates an anthropologically sensitive approach to the human sciences that has still not received the attention it deserves.

What are those without faith doing in liturgical enactments?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Wolterstorff
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Way

Often there are, among those who participate in some liturgical enactment by saying the prescribed words and performing the prescribed bodily actions, some who are lacking in faith: they do not have faith that the doctrines presupposed by the prescribed acts of worship are true. Why do they nonetheless participate in the way described? And what are they doing when they participate? Are they just going through the motions? Is that possible? Or are they, for example, thanking God even though they lack faith that God exists and is worthy of being thanked? Is that possible? These are the main questions addressed in this chapter. The chapter closes with a discussion and appraisal of the sincerity movement in eighteenth-century England, whose members insisted that worshippers should only say what they feel at the moment; to act otherwise would be insincere. And insincerity is a vice.

Race, Criminal Justice, and Migration Control

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Its Analysis ◽  
The World ◽  
Migration Control ◽  
Key Sites ◽  
And Migration ◽  
The Way

In an era of mass mobility, those who are permitted to migrate and those who are criminalized, controlled, and prohibited from migrating are heavily patterned by race. By placing race at the centre of its analysis, this volume brings together fourteen essays that examine, question, and explain the growing intersection between criminal justice and migration control. Through the lens of race, we see how criminal justice and migration enmesh in order to exclude, stop, and excise racialized citizens and non-citizens from societies across the world within, beyond, and along borders. Neatly organized in four parts, the book begins with chapters that present a conceptual analysis of race, borders, and social control, moving to the institutions that make up and shape the criminal justice and migration complex. The remaining chapters are convened around the key sites where criminal justice and migration control intersect: policing, courts, and punishment. Together the volume presents a critical and timely analysis of how race shapes and complicates mobility and how racism is enabled and reanimated when criminal justice and migration control coalesce. Race and the meaning of race in relation to citizenship and belonging are excavated throughout the chapters presented in the book, thereby transforming the way we think about migration.

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